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KING CHARLES THE FIRST. 



A CHI D'S 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 




/ 



Post Office r>e 

NOV 9 1903 

—7 



By CHARLES DICKENS, 



Author <if e David Copper field" "Oliver Twist," "Pickwick Papers,' 
"A Tale of Two Cities," etc., etc. 



KEW tore: 
A. L. BUfiT. PUBLISHER, 






N^ 



TABLE OP THE REIGNS. 

BEGINNING WITH KING ALFRED THE GREAT. 



THE SAXONS. 

The Reign of Alfred the Great . . began in 871 . . ended in 901 . . and lasted 80 yra. 

The Reign of Edward the Elder . began in 901 . . ended in 925 .. and lasted 24 yrs. 

The Reign of Athelstane began in 925 . . ended in 941 . . and lasted 16 yrs. 

T Ki?g e s iS . n ! . * .! h ?. . S ! X . . B .T. \ be S an in ^ • -ended in 1016. .and lasted 75 yrs. 

THE PANES, AND THE RESTORED SAXONS. 

The Reign of Canute began in 1016. .ended in 1035. .and lasted 19 yrs. 

The Reign of Harold Harefoot. .began in 1035. .ended in 1040. .and lasted 5 yrs. 
The Re'gn of Hardicanute began in 1040. .ended in 1042. .and lasted 2 yrs. 

T f essoS.^ . Ed . Wa . rd ! h . 6 °.T. | began in 1042. .ended in 1066. .and lasted 24 yrs. 

The Reign of Harold the Second, and the Norman Conquest, were 

also within the year 1066. 

THE NORMANS. 

^r1rs?Sed1h7co^ero^ } ^ in 1066 « •«»** in 1087. .and lasted 21 yrs. 

Th Seconf Sah4 S" . .^ \ be * a * * ™' .«*d * "00. .and lasted 13 yrs. 

™£n^li^ 6 . F ™: 1**» - "00. .ended in 1135. .and lasted 35 yrs. 

T s e te5fen!!?. * . *? f^f. .^ } be S an to 1135 « -ended in 1154. .and lasted 19 yrs. 

THE PLANTAGENETS. 

The Reign of Henry the Second., began in 1154. .ended in 1189. .and lasted 35 yrs. 

T Fhs?, e clnedih?SHeart! } be gan in 1189. .ended in 1199. .and lasted 10 yrs. 
T LacManf. . * .^l. ^ } be gan in 1199. .ended in 1216. .and lasted 17 yrs. 
The Reign of Henry the Third, .began in 1216. .ended in 1272. .and lasted 56 yrs. 
T Firs^ ^ISedlon^hlnis^ } be S a * * 1272 ' •«*«! in 1307. .and lasted 35 yrs. 
T Sec?nT. n . . °. f . . Ed . Wa . r . d . ! h& . \ be £ an in 1307 - -ended in 1327. .and lasted 20 yrs. 
T Third 6 ^. . ° f . . Ed r; a f d . .**! f be e an in 1327 « ' end ed in 1377. .and lasted 60 yrs. 
Th w^d?L.l.^?!i:S!i be * an to i£7 *« - efi ded in 1399. .and lasted S3 yr*. 



2 TABLE OF THE BEIGKB. 

THE PLANTAGENETS— (Continued). 

T Fourth! g caUe d B§So&! \ be ^ an in 1399 ' ■ ended in 1413 ' ' and lasted l4 y rs " 
The Reign of Henry the Fifth, .began in 1413. .ended in 1422. .and lasted 9 yrs. 
The Reign of Henry the Sixth, .began in 1422. .ended in 1461. .and lasted 39 yrs. 

T F e ourth ign . ° f . . . Ed . W . ar . d . ! h& . \ be ^ an in im • - ended m 1483 ' ' and lasted 22 y«. 

T F e ifth ^ . * .^ff. . ^ } be ^ an in 1483. .ended in 1483 \ and las e t | d g a few 

T1 Third eig . n . .?f. ™?*™ d . . .^ } be S an in 1483 ' - eiided in 1485 < ' and lasted 2 y rs - 

THE TUDORS. 

T Seventh^. . ? f ^?!^. . ^ } be ^ an "* 1485 - -ended in 1509. .and lasted 24 yrs. 
The Reign of Henry the Eighth.. began in 1509. .ended in 1547. .and lasted 38 yrs. 
The Reign of Edward the Sixth.. began in 1547 . .ended in 1553. .and lasted 6 yrs. 

The Reign of Mary began in 1553. .ended in 1558. .and lasted 5 yrs. 

The Reign of Elizabeth began in 1558. .ended in 1603. .and lasted 45 yrs. 

THE STUARTS. 

The Reign of James the First, .began in 1603. .ended in 1625. .and lasted 22 yrs. 
The Reign of Charles the First.. began in 1625. .ended in 1649. .and lasted 24 yrs. 

THE COMMONWEALTH. 

' n S^S^SSSS£^:: 1 be ^ in 1649 - - ended to 1653 - - a » d lasted 4 y™ 

^ e romwlll Ct0rat .! . °. f .°!^ er [ be S an in 1653. .ended in 1658. .and lasted 5 yrs. 

T cl-omwllf °. r . a ! e . °. f .^T! } be ? an in 1658 ' - ended in 1659 \ and Sonths? 6 ^ 11 

The Council of State and Gov- ) resumed in 1659, ended in j and lasted thir- 

ernment by Parliament — j 1660. 1 teen months. 

THE STUARTS RESTORED. 
T Second?. . .° f . CharleS .^ } be 8 an in 1660 ' - ended in 1685 ' ' and lasted 25 ^ 5 - 

^tcoSd!^ . ° f . . Ja ™f s . . .*?!! } be ^ an In im • • ended in 1688 - - and lasted 8 y rs - 

THE REVOLUTION.— 1688. (Comprised in the concluding 
chapter.) 

T and Mlf?..° f . .T! Uiam .. . in : } be ^ an in 1689, - ended in 1695 - - and lasted 6 y re - 

The Reign of William III ended in 1702. .and lasted 13 yrs. 

The Reign of Anne began in 1702. .ended in 1714. .and lasted 12 yrs 

The Reign of George the First, .began in 1714. .ended in 1727. .and lasted 13 yrs. 

Th S e econd gn ° f Ge0rge . . . the } be S an in im • ' ended in 176 ° • • and lasted 88 y rs - 
The Reign of George the Third, .began in 1760. .ended in 1820. .and lasted 60 yrs. 

T F e ourth gn . . .?? . ? 60rge .^ } be ^ an in 182 °- ' ended in 183 °- ,and lasted 10 yrs ' 

T F e ou?th gn of . .^ i . 1 . Ua ! n . . *?!! \ be ^ an in 183 °- • ended in 1837 - - and lasted r y 1 " 8 - 

The Reign of Victoria began in 1837. 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE, AND TABLE 
OF CONTENTS. 






CHAPTER PAGB 

I. Ancient England and the Romans. From 50 years 

before Christ, to the Year of our Lord 460 7 

II. Ancient England under the Early Saxons. From 

the year 450, to the year 871 16 

III. Engl&nd under the Good Saxon, Alfred, and Ed- 

ward the Elder. From the year 871, to the 
year 901 21 

IV. England under Athelstane and the Six Boy-Kings. 

From the year 925, to the year 1016 27 

V. England under Canute the Dane. From the year 

1016; to the year 1035 38 

VI. England under Harold Harefoot, Hardicanute, and 
Edward the Confessor. From the year 1035, to 

the year 1066 40 

VII. England under Harold the Second, and conquered 

by the Normans. All in the same year, 1066. . 47 
VIII. England under William the First, the Norman Con- 
queror. From the year 1066, to the year 1087. 51 
IX. England under William the Second, called Eufus. 

From the year 1087, to the year 1100 58 

X. England under Henry the First, called Fine-Scholar. 

From the year 1100, to the year 1135 65 

XL England under Matilda and Stephen. From the 

year 1135, to the year 1154 75 

Parts First and Second. 
XII. England under Henry the Second. From the year 

1154, to the year 1189. 79 



CHBONOLOGICAL TABLE, AND CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER 

XIII. 

XIV. 

XV. 

XVI. 



PAG* 

England under Richard the First, called the Lion- 
Heart. From the year 1189, to the year 1199. . 89 

England under John, called Lackland. From the 

year 1199, to the year 1216. 107 

England under Henry the Third. From the year 

1216, to the year 1272 119 

England under Edward the First, called Long- 
shanks. From the year 1272, to the year 1307. 132 

England under Edward the Second. From the year 

1307, to the year 1327 148 

England under Edward the Third. From the year 

1327, to the year 1377 158 

XIX. England under Richard the Second. From the year 

1377, to the year 1399 I 171 

England under Henry the Fourth, called Boling- 

broke. From the year 1399, to the year 1413. . 182 



XVII. 



XVIII, 



XX. 



Parts First and Second. 
XXI. England under Henry the Fifth. From the year 

1413, to the year 1422 : 187 



Parts First, Second (The Story of Joan of 
Arc), and Third. 
XXII. England under Henry the Sixth. From the year 

1422, to the year 1461 198 

XXIII. England under Edward the Fourth. From the 

year 1461, to the year 1483 217 

XXIV. England under Edward the Fifth. For a few weeks 

in the year 1483 225 

XXV. England under Richard the Third. From the year 

1483, to the year 1485 229 

XXVI. England under Henry the Seventh. From the year 

1485, to the year 1509 232 

XXVII. England under Henry the Eighth, called Bluff King 
Hal and Burly King Harry. From the year 

1509, to the year 1533 244 

XXV1TL England under Henry the Eighth, called Bluff King 
Hal and Burly King Harry. From the year 

1533, to the year 1547 256 

XXIX. England under Edward the Sixth. From the year 

1547, to the year 1558 26Q 



GBBONOLOQICAL TABLE, AND CONTENDS. 5 

CHAATER P-A^E 

XXX. England under Mary. From the year 1553, to the 

year 1558 274 

Parts First, Second, and Third. 
XXXI. England under Elizabeth. From the year 1558, to 

the year 1603 287 

Parts First and Second. 
XXXII. England under James the First. From the year 

1603, to the year 1625 311 

Parts First, Second, Third, and Fourth. 

XXXIII. England under Charles the First. From the year 

1625, to the year 1649 328 

Parts First and Second. 

XXXIV. England under Oliver Cromwell. From the year 

1649, to the year 1660 357 

Parts First and Second. 
XXXV. England under Charles the Second, called the Merry 
Monarch. From the year 1660, to the year 

1685 373 

XXXVI. England UDder James the Second. From the year 

1685, to the year 1688 395 

XXXVIL Conclusion. From the year 1688, to the year 1837. 408 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



CHAPTER I. 

ANCIENT ENGLAND AND THE E0MAN8. 

If you look at a Map of the World, you will see, in the 
left-hand upper corner of the Eastern Hemisphere, two 
Islands lying in the sea. They are England and Scotland, 
and Ireland. England and Scotland form the greater 
part of these Islands. Ireland is the next in size. The 
little neighboring islands, which are so small upon the 
Map as to be mere dots, are chiefly little bits of Scotland 
— broken off, I dare say, in the course of a great length 
of time, by the power of the restless water. 

In the old days, a long, long while ago, before Our 
Saviour was born on earth and lay asleep in a manger, 
these Islands were in the same place, and the stormy sea 
roared round them, just as it roars now. But the sea 
was not alive, then, with great ships and brave sailors, 
sailing to and from all parts of the world. It was very 
lonely. The Islands lay solitary, in the great expanse of 
water. The foaming waves dashed against their cliffs, 
and the bleak winds blew over their forests ; but the 
winds and waves brought no adventurers to land upon 
the Islands, and the savage Islanders knew nothing of 
the rest of the world and the rest of the world knew 
nothing of them. 

It is supposed that the Phoenicians, who were an ancient 
people, famous for carrying on trade, came in ships to 
these Islands, and found that they produced tin and 
lead ; both very useful things, as you know, and both 
produced to this very hour upon the seacoast. The most 
celebrated tin mines in Cornwall are, still, closed to the 
sea. One of them, which I have seen, is so close to it; 



8 A CHILD'S BIS TOUT OF ENQLAND. 

that it is hollowed out underneath the ocean ; and ths 
miners say, that in stormy weather, when they are at 
work down in that deep place, they can hear the noise 
of the waves thundering above their heads. So, the 
Phoenicians, coasting about the Islands, would come, with- 
out much difficulty, to where the tin and lead were. 

The Phoenicians traded with the Islanders for these 
metals, and gave the Islanders some other useful things 
in exchange. The Islanders were, at first, poor savages, 
going almost naked, or only dressed in the rough skins 
of beasts, and staining their bodies, as other savages do, 
with colored earths and the juices of plants. But the 
Phoenicians, sailing over to the opposite coasts of France 
and Belgium, and saying to the people there, " We have 
been to those white cliffs across the water, which you 
can see in fine weather, and from that country, which is 
called Britain, we bring this tin and lead," tempted some 
of the French and Belgians to come over also. These 
people settled themselves on the south coast of England, 
which is now called Kent; and, although they were a 
rough people too, they taught the savage Britons some 
useful arts, and improved that part of the Islands. It is 
probable that other people came over from Spain to Ire- 
land, and settled there. 

Thus, by little and little, strangers became mixed with 
the Islanders, and the savage Britons grew into a wild 
bold people ; almost savage, still, especially in the interior 
of the country away from the sea, where the foreign 
settlers seldom went ; but hardy, brave anid strong. 

The whole country was covered with forests, and 
swamps. The greater part of it was very misty and cold. 
There were no roads, no bridges, no streets, no houses 
that you would think deserving of the name. A town 
was nothing but a collection of straw-covered huts, hidden 
in a thick wood, with a ditch all round, and a low wall, 
made of mud, or the trunks of trees placed one upon an- 
other. The people planted little or no corn, but 2ived 
upon the flesh of their flocks and cattle. They made no 
coins, but used metal rings for money. They were clevet 
in basket-work, as savage people often are; and they 
could make a coarse kind of cloth, and some very bad 
earthenware. But in building fortresses they were much 
more clever. 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 9 

They made boats of basket-work, covered with the 
skins of animals, but seldom, if ever, ventured far from 
the shore. They made swords of copper mixed with tin ; 
but, these swords were of an awkward shape, and so soft 
that a heavy blow would bend one. They made light 
shields, short pointed daggers, and spears — which they 
jerked back after they had thrown them at an enemy, by 
a long strip of leather fastened to the stem. The butt-end 
was a rattle, to frighten an enemy's horse. The ancient 
Britons, being divided into as many as thirty or forty 
tribes, each commanded by its own little King, were con- 
stantly fighting with one another, as savage people 
usually do ; and they always fought with these weapons. 

They were very fond of horses. The standard of Kent 
was the picture of a white horse. They could break 
them in and manage them wonderfully well. Indeed, 
the horses (of which they had an abundance though they 
were rather small) were so well taught in those days, 
that they can scarcely be said to have improved since ; 
though the men are so much wiser. They understood, 
and obeyed, every word of command ; and would stand 
still by themselves, in all the din and noise of battle, 
while their masters went to fight on foot. The Britons 
could not have succeeded in their most remarkable art, 
without the aid of these sensible and trusty animals. 
The art I mean, is the construction and management of 
war-chariots or cars, for which they have ever been cele- 
brated in history. Each of the best sort of these chariots, 
not quite breast high in front, and open at the back, con- 
tained one man to drive, and two or three others to fight 
— all standing up. The horses who drew them were so 
well trained, that they would tear, at full gallop, over the 
most stony ways, and even through the woods ; dashing 
down their masters' enemies beneath their hoofs, and 
cutting them to pieces with the blades of swords, or 
scythes, which were fastened to the wheels, and stretched 
out beyond the car on each side, for that cruel purpose. 
In a moment, while at full speed, the horses would stop, 
at the driver's command. The men within would leap 
out, deal blows about them with their swords like hail, 
leap on the horses, on the pole, spring back into the char- 
iots anyhow ; and, as soon- as they were safe, the horses 
tore away again. 



10 A CHILD'S EISTohY OF ENGLAND. 

The Britons had a strange and terrible religion, called 
the Religion of the Druids. It seems to have been brought 
over, in very early times indeed, from the opposite country 
of France, anciently called Gaul, and to have mixed up 
the worship of the Serpent, and of the Sun and Moon, 
with the worship of some of the Heathen Gods and God- 
desses. Most of its ceremonies were kept secret by the 
priests, the Druids, who pretended to be enchanters, and 
who carried magicians' wands, and wore, each of them, 
about his neck, what he told the ignorant people was a 
Serpent's egg in a golden case. But it is certain that the 
Druidical ceremonies included the sacrifice of human 
victims, the torture of some suspected criminals, and, on 
particular occasions, even the burning alive, in immense 
wicker cages, of a number of men and animals together. 
The Druid Priests had some kind of veneration for the 
Oak, and for the mistletoe — the same plant that we hang 
up in houses at Christmas Time now — when its white 
berries grew upon the Oak. They met together in dark 
woods, which they called Sacred Groves ; and there they 
instructed, in their mysterious arts, young men who 
came to them as pupils, and who sometimes stayed with 
them as long as twenty years. 

These Druids built great Temples and altars, open to 
the sky, fragments of some of which are yet remaining. 
Stonehenge, on Salisbury Plain, in Wiltshire, is the most 
extraordinary of these. Three curious stones, called Kits 
Coty House, on Bluebell Hill, near Maidstone, in Kent, 
form another. We know, from examination of the great 
blocks of which such buildings are made, that they could 
not have been raised without the aid of some ingenious 
machines, which are common now, but which the ancient 
Britons certainly did not use in making their own un- 
comfortable houses. I should not wonder if the Druids, 
and their pupils who stayed with them twenty years, 
knowing more than the rest of the Britons, kept the peo- 
ple out of sight while they made these buildings, and then 
pretended that they built them by magic. Perhaps they 
had a hand in the fortresses too ; at all events, as they 
were very powerful, and very much believed in, and as 
they made and executed the laws, and paid no taxes, I 
don't wonder that they liked their trade. And, as they 
persuaded the people that the more Druids there were, 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. H 

the better off the people would be, I don't wonder that 
there were a good many of them. But it is pleasant to 
think that there are no Druids, now, who go on in that 
way, and pretend to carry Enchanters' Wands and Ser- 
pents' Eggs — and of course there is nothing of the kind, 
anywhere. 

Such was the improved condition of the ancient Brit- 
ons, fifty-five years before the birth of Our Saviour, 
when the Romans, under their great General, Julius 
Caesar, were masters of all the rest of the known world. 
Julius Caesar had then just conquered Gaul ; and hearing, 
in Gaul, a good deal about the opposite Island with the 
white cliffs, and about the bravery of the Britons who 
inhabited it — some of whom had been fetched over to 
help the Gauls in the war against him — he resolved, as 
he was so near, to come and conquer Britain next. 

So, Julius Caesar came sailing over to this Island of 
ours, with eighty vessels and twelve thousand men. And 
he came from the French coast between Calais and Bou- 
logne, " because thence was the shortest passage into 
Britain ; " just for the same reason as our steamboats 
now take the same track, every day. He expected to 
conquer Britain easily : but it was not such easy work as 
he supposed— for the bold Britons fought most bravely ; 
and, what with not having his horse soldiers with him 
(for they had been driven back by a storm), and what 
with having some of his vessels dashed to pieces by a 
high tide after they were drawn ashore, he ran great risk 
of being totally defeated. However, for once that the 
bold Britons beat him, he beat them twice ; though not so 
soundly but that he was very glad to accept their pro- 
posals of peace, and go away. 

But, in the spring of the next year, he came back ; this 
time, with eight hundred vessels and thirty thousand 
men. The British tribes chose, as their general-in-chief, 
a Briton, whom the Romans in their Latin language called 
Cassivellaunus, but whose British name is supposed 
to have been Caswallokt. A brave general he was, and 
well he and his soldiers fought the Roman army ! So 
well, that whenever in that war the Roman soldiers saw 
a great cloud of dust, and heard the rattle of the rapid 
British chariots, they trembled in their hearts. Besides 
a number of smaller battles, there was a battle fought 



12 A CHILD'S HISTOBT OF ENGLAND. 

near Canterbury, in Kent; there was a battle fought 
near Chertsey, in Surrey ; there was a battle fought near 
a marshy little town in a wood, the capital of that part 
of Britain which belonged to Cassivellaunus, and which 
was probably near what is now St. Albans, in Hertford- 
shire. However, brave Cassivellaunus had the worst 
of it, on the whole, though he and his men always fought 
like lions. As the other British chiefs were jealous of 
him, and were always quarrelling with him, and with one 
another, he gave up, and proposed peace. Julius Csesar 
was very glad to grant peace easily, and to go away again 
with all his remaining ships and men. He had expected 
to find pearls in Britain, and he may have found a few 
for anything I know ; but, at all events, he found deli- 
cious oysters, and I am sure he found tough Britons — of 
whom, I dare say, he made the same complaint as Napo- 
leon Bonaparte, the great French General, did, eighteen 
hundred years afterwards, when he said they were such 
unreasonable fellows that they never knew when they 
were beaten. They never did know, I believe, and never 
will. 

Nearly a hundred years passed on, and all that time, 
there was peace in Britain. The Britons 'mproved their 
towns and mode of life ; became more civilized, travelled, 
and learned a great deal from the Gauls and Romans. 
At last, the Roman Emperor, Claudius, sent Aulus Plau- 
tius, a skilful general, with a mighty force, to subdue the 
Island, and shortly afterwards arrived himself. They 
did little ; and Ostoeius Scapula, another general, came. 
Some of the British Chiefs of Tribes submitted. Others 
resolved to fight to the death. Of these brave men, the 
bravest was Caeactacus, or Caeadoc, who gave battle 
to the Romans, with his army, among the mountains of 
North Wales. " This day," said he to his soldiers, " de- 
cides the fate of Britain ! Your liberty, or your eternal 
slavery, dates from this hour. Remember your brave 
ancestors, who drove the great Caesar himself across the 
sea ! " On hearing these words, his men, with a great 
shout, rushed upon the Romans. But the strong Roman 
swords and armor were too much for the weaker British 
weapons in close conflict. The Britons lost the day. 
The wife and daughter of the brave Caeactacus were 
taken prisoners; his brothers delivered themselves up; 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 13 

he himself was betrayed into the hands of the Romans by 
his false and base stepmother; and they carried him, 
and all his family, in triumph to Rome. 

But a great man will be great in misfortune, great in 
prison, great in chains. His noble air, and dignified en- 
durance of distress, so touched the Roman people who 
thronged the streets to see him, that he and his family 
were restored to freedom. No one knows whether his 
great heart broke, and he died in Rome, or whether he 
ever returned to his own dear country. English oaks 
have grown up from acorns, and withered away, when 
they were hundreds of years old— and other oaks have 
sprung up in their places, and died too, very aged— 
since the rest of the history of the brave Cabactacus was 
forgotten. 

Still, the Britons would not yield. They rose again 
and again, and died by thousands, sword in hand. They 
rose, on every possible occasion. Suetonius, another 
Roman general, came, and stormed the Island of Angle- 
sey (then called Mona), which was supposed to be sacred, 
and he burnt the Druids in their own wicker cages, by 
their own fires. But, even while he was in Britain, with 
his victorious troops, the Britons rose. Because Boadicea, 
a British queen, the widow of the King of the Norfolk and 
Suffolk people, resisted the plundering of her property 
by the Romans who were settled in England, she was 
scourged, by order of Catus a Roman officer; and her 
two daughters were shamefully insulted in her presence, 
and her husband's relations were made slaves. To 
avenge this injury, the Britons rose, with all their might 
and rage. They drove Catus into Gaul ; they laid the 
Roman possessions waste; they forced the Romans out 
of London, then a poor little town, but a trading-place ; 
they hanged, burnt, crucified, and slew by the sword, 
seventy thousand Romans in a few days*. Suetonius 
strengthened his army, and advanced to give them battle. 
They strengthened their army, and desperately attacked 
his, on the field where it was strongly posted. Before 
the first charge of the Britons was made, Boadicea, in a 
war-chariot, with her fair hair streaming in the wind, 
and her injured daughters lying at her feet, drove among 
the troops, and cried to them for vengeance on their op- 
pressors, the licentious Romans. The Britons fought to 



14 A CHILD'S HISTOBY OF ENGLAND. 

the last; but they were vanquished with great slaughter, 
and the unhappy queen took poison. 

Still, the spirit of the Britons was not broken. When 
Suetonius left the country, they fell upon his troops, 
and retook the Island of Anglesey. Agricola came, fif- 
teen or twenty years afterwards, and retook it once more, 
and devoted seven years to subduing the country, 
especially that part of it which is now called Scotland ; 
but, its people, the Caledonians, resisted him at every 
inch of ground. They fought the bloodiest battles with 
him ; they killed their very wives and children, to pre- 
vent his making prisoners of them ; they fell, fighting, 
in such great numbers that certain hills in Scotland are 
yet supposed to be vast heaps of stones piled up above 
their graves. Hadrian came, thirty years afterwards, 
and still they resisted him. Severus came, nearly a 
hundred years afterwards, and they worried his 
great army like dogs, and rejoiced to see them die, by 
thousands, in the bogs and swamps. Caracalla, the son 
and successor of Severus, did the most to conquer them, 
for a time ; but not by force of arms. He knew how little 
that would do. He yielded up a quantity of land to the 
Caledonians, and gave the Britons the same privileges as 
the Romans possessed. There was peace, after this, for 
seventy years. 

Then new enemies arose. They were The Saxons, a 
fierce, seafaring people from the countries to the North 
of the Rhine, the great river of Germany, on the banks of 
which the best grapes grow to make the German wine. 
They began to come, in pirate ships, to the seacoast of 
Gaul and Britain, and to plunder them. They were re- 
pulsed by Carausius, a native either of Belgium or of 
Britain, who was appointed by the Romans to the com- 
mand, and under whom the Britons first began to fight 
upon the sea. But, after his time, they renewed their 
ravages. A few years more, and the Scots (which was 
then the name for the people of Ireland), and the Picts, 
a northern people, began to make frequent plundering 
incursions into the South of Britain. All these attacks 
were repeated, at intervals, during two hundred years, 
and through a long succession of Roman Emperors and 
chiefs ; during all which length of time, the Britons rose 
against the Romans, over and over again. At last, in 



A CHILD'S HISTOBY OF ENGLAND. 15 

the days of the Roman Honoeius, when the Roman 
power all over the world was fast declining, and when 
Rome wanted all her soldiers at home, the Romans 
abandoned all hope of conquering Britain, and went 
away. And still, at last, as at first, the Britons rose 
against them, in their old brave manner; for, a very 
little while before, they had turned away the Roman 
magistrates, and declared themselves an independent 
people. 

Five hundred years had passed, since Julius Caesar's 
first invasion of the Island, when the Romans departed 
from it forever. In the course of that time, although 
they had been the cause of terrible fighting and blood- 
shed, they had done much to improve the condition of 
the Britons. They had made great military roads ; they 
had built forts ; they had taught them how to dress, and 
arm themselves, much better than they had ever known 
how to do before; they had refined the whole British 
way of living. Ageicola had built a great wall of earth, 
more than seventy miles long, extending from Newcastle 
to beyond Carlisle, for the purpose of keeping out the 
Picts and Scots ; Hadeian had strengthened it ; Seveeus, 
finding it much in want of repair, had built it afresh of 
stone. Above all, it was in the Roman time, and by 
means of Roman ships, that the Christian Religion was 
first brought into Britain, and its people first taught the 
great lesson that, to be good in the sight of God, they 
must love their neighbors as themselves, and do unto 
others as they would be done by. The Druids declared 
it was very wicked to believe in any such thing, and 
cursed all the people who did believe it, very heartily. 
But, when the people found that they were none the 
better for the blessings of the Druids, and none the worse 
for the curses of the Druids, but, that the sun shone and 
the rain fell without consulting the Druids at all, they 
just began to think that the Druids were mere men, and 
that it signified very little whether they cursed or blessed. 
After which, the pupils of the Druids fell off greatly in 
numbers, and the Druids took to other trades. 

Thus I have come to the end of the Roman time in 
England. It is but little that is known of those five 
hundred years ; but some remains of them are still found. 
Often, when laborers are digging up the ground, to malif 



16 A CHILD' 8 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

foundations for houses or churches, they light on rusty 
money that once belonged to the Romans. Fragments 
of plates from which they ate, of goblets from which they 
drank, and of pavements on which they trod, are discovered 
among the earth that is broken by the plough, or the dust 
that is crumbled by the gardener's spade. Wells that 
that the Romans sank, still yield water ; roads that the 
Romans made, form part of our highways. In some old 
battle-fields, British spear-heads and Roman armor have 
been found, mingled together in decay, as they fell in the 
thick pressure of the fight. Traces of Roman camps 
overgrown with grass, and of mounds that are the burial- 
places of heaps of Britons, are to be seen in almost all 
parts of the country. Across the bleak moors of Nor- 
thumberland, the wall of Severus, overrun with moss and 
weeds, still stretches, a strong ruin ; and the shepherds 
and their dogs He sleeping on it in the summer w r eather. 
On Salisbury Plain, Stonehenge yet stands : a monument 
of the earlier time when the Roman name was unknown 
in Britain, and when the Druids, with their best magic 
wands, could not have written it in the sands of the wild 
seashore. 



CHAPTER n. 

ANCIENT ENGLAND UNDER THE EARLY SAXONS. 

The Romans had scarcely gone away from Britain, 
when the Britons began to wish they had never left it. 
For, the Roman soldiers being gone, and the Britons 
being much reduced in numbers by their long wars, the 
Picts and Scots came pouring in, over the broken and 
unguarded wall of Severus, in swarms. They plundered 
the richest towns, and killed the people ; and came back 
so often for more booty and more slaughter, that the 
unfortunate Britons lived a life of terror. As if the 
Picts and Scots were not bad enough on land, the Saxons 
attacked the Islanders by sea; and, as if something more 
were still wanting to make them miserable, they quar- 
relled bitterly among themselves as to what prayers they 
ought to say, and how they ought to say them. The 



A CHILD'S BISTORT OF ENGLAND, If 

priests, being very angry with one another on these ques- 
tions, cursed one another in the heartiest manner; and 
(uncommonly like the old Druids) cursed all the people 
whom they could not persuade. So, altogether, the 
Britons were very badly oil', you may believe. 

They were in such distress, in short, that they sent a 
letter to Rome entreating help— which they called The 
Groans of the Britons ; and in which they said, " The bar- 
barians chase us into the sea, the sea throws us back upon 
the barbarians, and we have only the hard choice left us 
of perishing by the sword, or perishing by the waves." 
But, the Romans could not help them, even if they were 
so inclined ; for they had enough to do to defend them- 
selves against their own enemies, who were then very 
fierce and strong. At last, the Britons, unable to bear 
their hard condition any longer, resolved to make peace 
with the Saxons, and to invite the Saxons to come into 
their country, and help them to keep out the Picts and 
Scots. 

It was a British Prince named Vortigern who took 
this resolution, and who made a treaty of friendship with 
Hengist and Horsa, two Saxon chiefs. Both of these 
names, in the old Saxon language, signify Horse; for 
the Saxons, like many other nations in a rough state, 
were fond of giving men the names of animals, as Horse, 
Wolf, Bear, Hound. The Indians of North America — a 
very inferior people to the Saxons though — do the same 
to this day. 

Hengist and Horsa drove out the Picts and Scots ; 
and Vortigern, being grateful to them for that service, 
made no opposition to their settling themselves in that 
part of England which is called the Isle of Thanet, or to 
their inviting over more of their countrymen to join 
them. But Hengist had a beautiful daughter named 
Rowena; and when, at a feast, she filled a golden goblet 
to the brim with wine, and gave it to Vortigern, saying 
in a sweet voice, " Dear King, thy health ! " the king fell 
in love with her. My opinion is, that the cunning Hen- 
gist meant him to do so, in order that the Saxons might 
have greater influence with him ; and that the fair Rowena 
came to that feast, golden goblet and all, on purpose. 

At any rate, they were married ; and, long afterwards,, 
whenever the king was angry with the Saxons, or jeal- 



18 A (OBlLb'B HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

ous of their encroachments, Rowena would put he? 
beautiful arms round his neck, and softly say, "Dear 
king, they are my people ! Be favorable to them, as you 
loved that Saxon girl who gave you the golden goblet of 
wme at the feast ! " And, really, I don't see how the 
king could help himself. 

Ah ! We must all die ! In the course of years, Vor- 
tigern, died — he was dethroned, and put in prison, first, 
I am afraid; and Rowena died; and generations of 
Saxons and Britons died ; and events that happened 
during a long, long time, would have been quite forgot- 
ten but for the tales and songs of the old Bards, who 
used to go about from feast to feast, with their white 
beards, recounting the deeds of their forefathers. Among 
the histories of which they sang and talked, there was a 
famous one, concerning the bravery and virtues of King 
Arthur, supposed to have been a British Prince in those 
old times. But, whether such a person really lived, or 
whether there were several persons whose histories came 
to be confused together under that one name, or whether 
all about him was invention, no one knows. 

I will tell you, shortly, what is most interesting in the 
early Saxon times, as they are described in these songs 
and stories of the Bards. 

In, and long after, the days of Vortigern, fresh bodies 
of Saxons, under various chiefs, came pouring into Britain. 
One body, conquering the Britons in the East, and settling 
there, called their kingdom Essex ; another body settled 
in the West, and called their kingdom Wessex; the 
Northfolk, or Norfolk people, established themselves in 
one place; the Southfolk, or Suffolk people, established 
themselves in another ; and gradually seven kingdoms or 
states arose in England, which were called the Saxon 
Heptarchy. The poor Britons, falling back before these 
crowds of fighting men whom they had innocently invited 
over as friends, retired into Wales and the adjacent coun- 
try ; into. Devonshire, and into Cornwall. Those parts 
of England long remained unconquered. And in Corn- 
wall now — where the seacoast is very gloomy, steep, and 
rugged — where, in the dark winter time, ships have been 
often wrecked close to the land, and every soul on board 
has perished — where the winds and waves howl drearily, 
and split the solid rocks into arches and caverns — there 



A CHILD* S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 1§ 

are very ancient ruins, which the people call the ruins of 
King Arthur's Castle. 

Kent is the most famous of the seven Saxon kingdoms, 
because the Christian religion was preached to the 
Saxons there (who domineered over the Britons too 
much, to care for what they said about their religion, or 
anything else), by Augustine, a monk from Rome. King 
Ethelbert, of Kent, was soon converted ; and the mo- 
ment he said he was a Christian, his courtiers all said they 
were Christians ; after which, ten thousand of his subjects 
said they were Christians too. Augustine built a little 
church, close to this king's palace, on the ground now 
occupied by the beautiful cathedral of Canterbury. Se- 
bert, the king's nephew, built on a muddy marshy place, 
near London, where there had been a temple to Apollo, a 
church dedicated to Saint Peter, which is now West- 
minster Abbey. And, in London itself, on the foundation 
of a temple to Diana, he built another little church, which 
has risen up, since that old time, to be Saint Paul's. 

After the death of Ethelbert, Edwin, King of Nor- 
thumbria, who was such a good king that it was said a 
woman or child might openly carry a purse of gold, in 
his reign, without fear, allowed his child to be baptized, 
and held a great council to consider whether he and his 
people should all be Christians or not. It was decided 
that they should be. Coin, the chief priest of the old 
religion, made a great speech on the occasion. In this 
discourse he told the people that he had found out the 
old gods to be impostors. " I am quite satisfied of it," 
he said. " Look at me ! I have been serving them all 
my life, and they have done nothing for me ; whereas, if 
they had been really powerful, they could not have de- 
cently done less, in return for all I have done for them, 
than make my fortune. As they have never made my 
fortune, I am quite convinced they are impostors ! " 
When this singular priest had finished speaking, he 
hastily armed himself with sword and lance, mounted a 
war-horse, rode at a furious gallop in sight of all the 
people to the temple, and flung his lance against it as an 
insult. From that time, the Christian religion spread 
itself among the Saxons, and became their faith. 

The next very famous prince was Egbert. He lived 
about a hundred and fifty years afterwards, and claimed 



£0 A CBIL&S HtSfOUT OP mGLAtffi. 

to have a better right to the throne of Wessex thaii 
Beortric, another Saxon prince, who was at the head of 
that kingdom, and who married Edburga, the daughter 
of Offa, a king of another of the seven kingdoms. This 
Queen Edburga was a handsome murderess, who poisoned 
people when they offended her. One day, she mixed a cup 
of poison for a certain noble belonging to the court ; but 
her husband drank of it too, by mistake, and died. Upon 
this, the people revolted, in great crowds ; and running 
to the palace, and thundering at the gates, cried, " Down 
with the wicked queen, who poisons men ! " They drove 
her out of the country, and abolished the title she had 
disgraced. When years had passed away, some travellers 
came home from Italy, and said that in the town of Pavia 
they had seen a ragged beggar-woman, who had once been 
handsome, but was then shrivelled, bent, and yellow, 
wandering about the streets, crying for bread ; and that 
this beggar-woman was the poisoning English queen. It 
was, indeed, Edburga ; and so she died, without a shelter 
for her wretched head. 

Egbert, not considering himself safe in England, in 
consequence of his having claimed the crown of Wessex 
(for he thought his rival might take him prisoner and put 
him to death), sought refuge at the court of Charlemagne, 
King of France. On the death of Beortric, so unhappily- 
poisoned by mistake, Egbert came back to Britain ; suc- 
ceeded to the throne of Wessex ; conquered some of the 
other monarchs of the seven kingdoms ; added their terri- 
tories to his own ; and, for the first time, called the country 
over which he ruled, England. 

And now, new enemies arose, who for a long time, 
troubled England sorely. These were the Northmen, the 
people of Denmark and Norway, whom the English called 
the Danes. They were a warlike people, quite at home 
upon the sea ; not Christians ; very daring and cruel. 
They came over in ships, and plundered and burned 
wheresoever they landed. Once, they beat Egbert in 
battle. Once, Egbert beat them. But, they cared no 
more for being beaten than the English themselves. In 
the four following short reigns, of Ethelwulf, and his 
three sons, Ethelbald, Ethelbert, and Ethelred they 
came back over and over again, burning and plundering,, 
and laying England waste. In the last-mentioned reign r 



A CHILD'S HISTOBY OF ENGLAND, 2l 

they seized Edmund, King of East England, and bound 
him to a tree. Then, they proposed to him that he should 
change his religion ; but he, being a good Christian, 
steadily refused. Upon that, they beat him, made 
cowardly jests upon him, all defenceless as he was, shot 
arrows at him, and, finally, struck off his head. It is im- 
possible to say whose head they might have struck off 
next, but for the death of King Ethelred from a wound 
he had received in fighting against them, and the suc- 
cession to his throne of the best and wisest king that ever 
lived in England. 



CHAPTER III. 

ENGLAND, UNDER THE GOOD SAXON, ALFRED. 

Alfred the Great was a young man, three and twenty 
years of age, when he became king. Twice in his child- 
hood, he had been taken to Rome, where the Saxon nobles 
were in the habit of going on journeys winch they sup- 
posed to be religious ; and, once, he had stayed for some 
time in Paris. Learning, however, was so little cared for, 
then, that at twelve years old he had not been taught to 
read ; although, of the four sons of King Ethelwulf, he, 
the youngest, was the favorite. But he had — as most 
men who grow up to be great and good are generally 
found to have had — an excellent mother ; and, one day, 
this lady, whose name was Osburgha, happened, as she 
was sitting among her sons, to read a book of Saxon 
poetry. The art of printing was not known until long and 
long after that period, and the book, which was written f 
was what is called " illuminated," with beautiful bright 
letters, richly painted. The brothers admiring it very 
much, their mother said, "I will give it to that one of 
you four princes who first learns to read." Alfred 
sought out a tutor that very day, applied himself to learn 
with great diligence, and soon won the book. He was 
proud of it, all his life. 

This great king, in the first year of his reign, fought nine 
battles with the Danes. He made some treaties with them 
too, by which the false Danes swore that they would quit 
the country. They pretended to consider that they had 



22 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

taken a very solemn oath, in swearing this upon the holy 
bracelets that they wore, and which were always buried 
with them when they died ; but they cared little for it, 
for they thought nothing of breaking oaths and treaties 
too, as soon as it suited their purpose, and coming back 
again to fight, plunder, and burn, as usual. One fatal 
winter, in the fourth year of King Alfked's reign, they 
spread themselves in great numbers over the whole of 
England ; and so dispersed and routed the king's soldiers 
that the king was left alone, and was obliged to disguise 
himself as a common peasant, and to take refuge in the 
cottage of one of his cowherds who did not know his face. 

Here, King Alfred, while the Danes sought him far 
and wide, was left alone one day, by the cowherd's wife, 
to watch some cakes which she put to bake upon the 
hearth. But, being at work upon his bows and arrows, 
with which he hoped to punish the false Danes when a 
brighter time should come, and thinking deeply of his 
poor unhappy subjects whom the Danes chased through 
the land, his noble mind forgot the cakes, and they were 
burnt. " What ! " said the cowherd's wife, who scolded 
him wellwhen she came back, and little thought she was 
scolding the king, " you will be ready enough to eat them 
by and by, and yet you cannot watch them, idle dog ? " 

At length, the Devonshire men made head against a 
new host of Danes who landed on their coast ; killed their 
chief, and captured their flag ; on which was represented 
the likeness of a Raven — a very fit bird for a thievish army 
like that, I think. The loss of their standard troubled 
the Danes greatly, for they believed it to be enchanted— 
woven by the three daughters of one father in a single 
afternoon — and they had a story among themselves that 
when they were victorious in battle, the Raven stretched 
his wings and seemed to fly ; and that when they were 
defeated, he would droop. He had good reason to droop, 
now, if he could have done anything half so sensible ; for, 
King Alfred joined the Devonshire men ; made a camp 
with them on a piece of firm ground in the midst of a bog 
in Somersetshire ; and prepared for a great attempt for 
vengeance on the Danes, and the deliverance of his op- 
pressed people. 

But, first, as it was important to know how numerous 
those pestilent Danes were, and how they were fortified, 



A CHILD' 8 HlSTOR Y OP MNGLAJStiy. 23 

King Alfred, being a good musician, disguised himself 
as a gleeman or minstrel, and went, with his harp, to the 
Danish camp. He played and sang in the very tent of 
Guthrum the Danish leader, and entertained the Danes 
as they caroused. While he seemed to think of nothing 
but his music, he was watchful of their tents, their arms, 
their discipline, everything that he desired to know. 
And right soon did this great King entertain them to a 
different tune ; for, summoning all his true followers to 
meet him at an appointed place, where they received him 
with joyful shouts and tears, as the monarch whom many 
of them had given up for lost or dead, he put himself at 
their head, marched on the Danish Camp, defeated the 
Danes with great slaughter, and besieged them for four- 
teen days to prevent their escape. But, being as merci- 
ful as he was good and brave, he then, instead of killing 
them, proposed peace : on condition that they should alto- 
gether depart from the Western part of England and 
settle in the East ; and that Guthrum should become a 
Christian in remembrance of the Divine religion which 
now taught his conqueror, the noble Alfred, to forgive 
the enemy who had so often injured him. This, Guthrum 
did. At his baptism, King Alfred was his godfather. 
And Guthrum was an honorable chief who well deserved 
that clemency ; for, ever afterwards, he was loyal and 
faithful to the king. The Danes under him were faithful 
too. They plundered and burned no more, but worked like 
honest men. They ploughed, and sowed, and reaped, and 
led good honest English lives. And I hope the children 
of those Danes played, many a time, with Saxon children 
in the sunny fields ; and that Danish young men fell in 
love with Saxon girls, and married them ; and that Eng- 
lish travellers, benighted at the doors of Danish cottages, 
often went in for shelter until morning ; and that Danes 
and Saxons sat by the red fire, friends, talking of King 
Alfred the Great. 

All the Danes were not like these under Guthrum; for, 
after some years, more of them came over, in the old 
plundering and burning way — among them a fierce pirate 
of the name of Hastings, who had the boldness to sail 
up the Thames to Gravesend, with eighty ships. For 
three years, there was a war with these Danes ; and there 
was a famine in the country, too, and a plague, both upon 



24 A CH1L&S HISTORY OP $$&LAtfD. 

human creatures and beasts. But King Alfred, whose 
mighty heart never failed him, built large ships neverthe- 
less, with which to pursue the pirates on the sea; and he 
encouraged his soldiers, by his brave example, to fight 
valiantly against them on the shore. At last, he drove 
them all away ! and then there was respose in England. 

As great and good in peace, asMie was great and good 
in war, King Alfred never rested from his labors to im- 
prove his people. He loved to talk with clever men, 
and with travellers from foreign countries, and to write 
down what they told him, for his people to read. He 
had studied Latin after learning to read English, and 
now another of his labors was, to translate Latin books 
into the English-Saxon tongue, that his people might be 
interested and improved by their contents. He made 
just laws, that they might live more happily and freely ; 
he turned away all partial judges, that no wrong might 
be done them ; he was so careful of their property, and 
punished robbers so severely, that it was a common 
thing to say that under the great King Alfred, garlands 
of golden chains and jewels might have hung across the 
streets, and no man would have touched one. He founded 
schools; he patiently heard causes himself in his court 
of Justice ; the great desires of his heart were, to do 
right to all his subjects, and to leave England better, 
wiser, happier in all ways, than he found it. His indus- 
try in these efforts was quite astonishing. Every day 
he divided into certain portions, and in each portion de- 
voted himself to a certain pursuit. That he might divide 
his time exactly, he had wax torches or candles made, 
which were all of the same size, were notched across at 
regular distances, and were always kept burning. Thus, 
as the candles burnt down, he divided the day into notches, 
almost as accurately as we now divide it into hours 
upon the clock. But, when the candles were first invent- 
ed, it was found that the wind and draughts of air, blow- 
ing into the palace through the doors and windows, and 
through the chinks in the wall, caused them to gutter 
and burn unequally. To prevent this, the king had them 
put into CRses formed of wood and white horn. And these 
were the first lanthorns ever made in England. 

All this time, he was afflicted with a terrible unknown 
disease, which caused him violent and frequent pain that 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 26 

nothing could relieve. He bore it, as he had borne all 
the troubles of his life, like a brave good man, until he 
was fifty-three years old ; and then, having reigned 
thirty years, he died. He died in the year nine hundred 
and one; but, long ago as that is, his fame, and the love 
and gratitude with which his subjects regarded him, are 
freshly remembered to the present hour. 

In the next reign, which was the reign of Edward, sur- 
named The Elder, who was chosen in council, to succeed, 
a nephew of King Alfred troubled the country by try- 
ing to obtain the throne. The Danes in the East of Eng- 
land took part with this usurper (perhaps because they 
had honored his uncle so much, and honored him for 
his uncle's sake), and there was hard fighting; but, the 
king, with the assistance of his sister, gained the day, 
and reigned in peace for four and twenty years. He grad- 
ually extended his power over the whole of England, 
and so the Seven Kingdoms were united into one. 

When England thus became one kingdom, ruled over 
by one Saxon king, the Saxons had been settled in the 
country more than four hundred and fifty years. Great 
changes had taken place in its customs during that time. 
The Saxons were still greedy eaters and great drinkers, 
and their feasts were often of a noisy and drunken kind ; 
but many new comforts and even elegances had become 
known, and were fast increasing. Hangings for the walls 
of rooms, where, in these modern days, we paste up 
paper, are known to have been sometimes made of silk, 
ornamented with birds and flowers in needlework. 
Tables and chairs were curiously carved in different 
woods; were sometimes decorated with gold or silver; 
sometimes even made of those precious metals. Knives 
and spoons were used at table; golden ornaments were 
worn — with silk and cloth, and golden tissues and em- 
broideries ; dishes were made of gold and silver, brass 
and bone. There were varieties of drinking-horns, bed- 
steads, musical instruments. A harp was passed round, 
at a feast, like the drinking-bowl, from guest to guest; 
and each one usually sang or played when his turn came. 
The weapons of the Saxons were stoutly made, and among 
them was a terrible iron hammer that gave deadly blows, 
and was long remembered. The Saxons themselves were 
a handsome people. The men were proud of their long 



26 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

fair hair, parted on the forehead; their ample beards, 
their fresh complexions, and clear eyes. The beauty of 
the Saxon women filled all England with a new delight 
and grace. 

I have more to tell of the Saxons yet, but I stop to say 
this now, because, under the Great Alfred, all the beet 
points. of the English-Saxon character were first encour- 
aged, and in him first shown. It has been the greatest 
character among the nations of the earth. Wherever the 
descendants of the Saxon race have gone, have sailed, or 
otherwise made their way, even to the remotest regions 
of the world, they have been patient, persevering, never 
to be broken in spirit, never to be turned aside from 
enterprises on which they have resolved. In Europe, 
Asia, Africa, America, the whole world over ; in the 
desert, in the forest, on the sea ; scorched by a burning 
sun, or frozen by ice that never melts; the Saxon blood 
remains unchanged. Wheresoever that race goes, there, 
law, and industry, and safety for life and property, and 
all the great results of steady perseverance, are certain 
to arise. 

I pause to think with admiration, of the noble king 
who, in his single person, possessed all the Saxon virtues. 
Whom misfortune could not subdue, whom prosperity 
could not spoil, whose perseverance nothing could shake. 
Who was hopeful in defeat, and generous in success. 
Who loved justice, freedom, truth, and knowledge. Who, 
in his care to instruct his people, probably did more to 
preserve the beautiful old Saxon language, than I can 
imagine. Without whom, the English tongue in which I 
tell his story might have wanted half its meaning. As it 
is said that his spirit still inspires some of our best 
English laws, so, let you and me pray that it may animate 
our English hearts at least to this — to resolve, when we 
see any of our fellow-creatures left in ignorance, that we 
will do our oest, while life is in us, to have them taught, 
and to tell those rulers whose duty it is to teach them, 
and who neglect their duty, that they have profited very 
little by all the years that have rolled away since the 
year nine hundred and one, and that they are far behind 
the bright example of King Alfred the Great. 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 27 

CHAPTER IV. 

ENGLAND UNDER ATHELSTANE AND THE SIX BOY-KINGS. 

Athelstane, the son of Edward the Elder, succeeded 
that king. He reigned only fifteen years ; but he remem- 
bered the glory of his grandfather, the great Alfred, and 
governed England well. He reduced the turbulent people 
of Wales, and obliged them to pay him a tribute in money, 
and in cattle, and to send him their best hawks and 
hounds. He was victorious over the Cornish men, who 
were not yet quiet under the Saxon government. He 
restored such of the old laws as were good, and had fallen 
into disuse ; made some wise new laws and took care of 
the poor and weak. A strong alliance, made against him 
by Anlaf a Danish prince, Constantine King of the 
Scots, and the people of North Wales, he broke and de- 
feated in one great battle, long famous for the vast num- 
bers slain in it. After that, he had a quiet reign ; the 
lords and ladies about him had leisure to become polite 
and agreeable ; and foreign princes were glad (as they 
have sometimes been since) to come to England on visits 
to the English court. 

When Athelstane died, at forty-seven years old, his 
brother Edmund, who was only eighteen, became king. 
He was the first of six boy-kings, as you will presently 
know. 

They called him the Magnificent, because he showed a 
taste for improvement and refinement, But he was beset 
by the Danes, and had a short and troubled reign, which 
came to a troubled end. One night, when he was feasting 
in his hall, and had eaten much and drunk deep, he 
saw, among the company, a noted robber named Leof, 
who had been banished from England. Made very angry 
by the boldness of this man, the king turned to his cup- 
bearer, and said, " There is a robber sitting at the table 
yonder, who, for his crimes, is an outlaw in the land — a 
hunted wolf, whose life any man may take, at any time. 
Command that robber to depart ! " — " I will not depart ! " 
said Leof. "No?" cried the king. "No, by the Lord ! " 
said Leof. Upon that the king rose from his seat, and, 



28 A CHILD'S HISTOBT OF ENGLAND. 

making passionately at the robber, and seizing him by his 
long hair, tried to throw him down. But the robber had 
a dagger underneath his cloak, and, in the scuffle, stabbed 
the king to death. That done, he set his back against 
the wall, and fought so desperately, that although he was 
soon cut to pieces by the king's armed men, and the wall 
and pavement were splashed with his blood, yet it was 
not before he had killed and wounded many of them. 
You may imagine what rough lives the kings of those 
times led when one of them could struggle, half drunk, 
with a public robber in his own dining-hall, and be stabbed 
in presence of the company who ate and drank with him. 

Then succeeded the boy-king Edeed, who was weak 
and sickly in body, but of a strong mind. And his armies 
fought the Northmen, the Danes, and Norwegians, or 
the Sea- Kings, as they were called, and beat them for the 
time. And, in nine years, Ed red died and passed away. 

Then came the boy-king Edwy, fifteen years of age ; 
but the real king, who had the real power, was a monk 
named Dunstan — a clever priest, a little mad, and not a 
little proud and cruel. 

Dunstan was then Abbot of Glastonbury Abbey, 
whither the body of King Edmund the Magnificent was 
carried, to be buried. While yet a boy, he had got out 
of his bed, one night (being then in a fever), and walked 
about Glastonbury Church when it was under repair; 
and, because he did not tumble off some scaffolds that 
were there, and break his neck, it was reported that he 
had been shown over the building by an angel. He had 
also made a harp that was said to play of itself — which 
it very likely did, as JEolian Harps, which are played by 
the wind, and are understood now, always do. For these 
wonders he had been once denounced by his enemies, who 
were jealous of his favor with the late king Athelstane, 
as a magician ; and he had been waylaid, bound hand 
and foot, and thrown into a marsh. But he got out 
again, somehow, to cause a great deal of trouble yet. 

The priests of those days were, generally, the only 
scholars. They were learned in many things. Having to 
make their own convents and monasteries on uncultivated 
grounds that were granted to them by the Crown, it was 
necessary that they should be good farmers and good 
gardeners, or their lands woul4 tiaye been too poor to 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 29 

support them. For the decoration of the chapels where 
they prayed, and for the comfort of the refectories where 
they ate and drank, it was necessary that there should 
• be good carpenters, good smiths, good painters, among 
them. For their greater safety in sickness and accident, 
living alone by themselves in solitary places, it was nec- 
essary that they should study the virtues of plants and 
herbs, and should know how to dress cuts, burns, scalds, 
and bruises, and how to set broken limbs. Accordingly, 
they taught themselves, and one another, a great variety 
of useful arts; and became skilful in agriculture, medi- 
cine, surgery, and handicraft. And when they wanted 
aid of any little piece of machinery, which would be 
simple enough now, but was marvellous then, to impose 
a trick upon the poor peasants, they knew very well how 
to make it; and did make it many a time and often, I 
have no doubt. 

Dunstan, Abbot of Glastonbury Abbey, was one of the 
most sagacious of these monks. He was an ingenious 
smith, and worked at a forge in his little cell. This cell 
was made too short to admit of his lying at full length 
when he went to sleep—as if that did any good to any- 
body !— and he used to tell the most extraordinary lies 
about demons and spirits, who, he said, came there to 
persecute him. For instance, he related that, one day 
when he was at work, the devil looked in at the little 
window, and tried to tempt him to lead a life of idle 
pleasure; whereupon, having his pincers in the fire, red 
hot, he seized the devil by the nose, and put him to such 
pain, that his bellowings were heard for miles and miles. 
Some people are inclined to think this nonsense a part 
of Dunstan's madness (for his head never quite recovered 
the fever), but I think not. I observe that it induced 
the ignorant people to consider him a holy man, and that 
it made him very powerful. Which was exactly what he 
always wanted. 

On the day of the coronation of the handsome boy- 
king Edwy, it was remarked by Odo, Archbishop of 
Canterbury (who was a Dane by birth), that the king 
quietly left the coronation feast, while all the company 
were there. Odo, much displeased, sent his friend 
Dunstan to seek him. Dunstan finding him in the com- 
pany of his beautiful young wife Elgiva, and her mother 



30 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

Ethelgiva, a good and virtuous lady, not only grossly 
abused them, but dragged the young king back into the 
feasting-hall by force. Some, again, think Dunstan did 
this because the young king's fair wife was his own 
cousin, and the monks objected to people marrying their 
own cousins ; but I believe he did it, because he was an 
imperious, audacious, ill-conditioned priest, who, hav- 
ing loved a young lady himself before he became a sour 
monk, hated all love now, and everything belonging to it. 

The young king was quite old enough to feel this in- 
sult. Dunstan had been Treasurer in the last reign, and 
he soon charged Dunstan with having taken some of the 
last king's money. The Glastonbury Abbot fled to Belgium 
(very narrowly escaping some pursuers who were sent to 
put out his eyes, as you will wish they had, when you 
read what follows), and his abbey was given to priests 
who were married; whom he always, both before and 
afterwards, opposed. But he quickly conspired with his 
friend, Odo the Dane, to set up the king's young brother, 
Edgar, as his rival for the throne ; and, not content with 
this revenge, he caused the beautiful queen Elgiva, 
though a lovely girl of only seventeen or eighteen, to be 
stolen from one of the Royal Palaces, branded in the 
cheek with a red hot iron, and sold into slavery in Ire- 
land. But the Irish people pitied and befriended her; 
and they said, " Let us restore the girl-queen to the boy- 
king, and make the young lovers happy ! " and they 
cured her of her cruel wound, and sent her home as 
beautiful as before. But the villain Dunstan, and that 
other villain,Odo, caused her to be waylaid at Gloucester as 
she was joyfully hurrying to join her husband, and to be 
hacked and hewn with swords, and to be barbarously 
maimed and lamed, and left to die. When Edwy the 
Fair (his people called him so, because he was so young 
and handsome) heard of her dreadful fate, he died of a 
broken heart ; and so the pitiful story of the poor young 
wife and husband ends ! Ah ! Better to be two cottagers 
in these better times, than king and queen of England in 
those bad days, though never so fair! 

Then came the boy-king, Edgar, called the Peaceful, 
fifteen years old. Dunstan, being still the real king, 
drove all married priests out of the monasteries and 
abbeys, and replaced them by solitary monks like him- 



A CHILD'S BISTORT 0# ENGLAND. 31 

self, of the rigid order called the Benedictines. He mad« 
himself Archbishop of Canterbury, for his greater glory ; 
and exercised such power over the neighboring British 
princes, and so collected them about the king, that once, 
when the king held his court at Chester, and went on 
the river Dee to visit the monastery of Saint John, the 
eight oars of his boat were pulled (as the people used to 
delight in relating in stories and songs) by eight crowned 
kings, and steered by the King of England. As Edgar 
was very obedient to Dunstan and the monks they took 
great pains to represent him as the best of kings. But 
he was really profligate, debauched, and vicious. He 
once forcibly carried off a young lady from the convent 
at Wilton ; and Dunstan, pretending to be very much 
shocked, condemned him not to wear his crown upon his 
head for seven years — no great punishment, I dare say, 
as it can hardly have been a more comfortable ornament 
to wear than a stewpan without a handle, His marriage 
with his second wife, Elfeida, is one of the worst events 
of his reign. Hearing of the beauty of this lady, he dis- 
patched his favorite courtier, Athelwold, to her father's 
castle in Devonshire, to see if she were really as charm- 
ing as fame reported. Now she was so exceedingly beau- 
tiful that Athelwold fell in love with her himself, and 
married her ; but he told the king that she was only rich 
— not handsome. The king, suspecting the truth when 
they came home, resolved to pay the newly married 
couple a visit ; and, suddenly, told Athelwold to prepare 
for his immediate coming. Athelwold, terrified, con- 
fessed to his young wife what he had said and done, and 
implored her to disguise her beauty by some ugly dress 
or silly manner, that he might be safe from the king's 
anger. She promised that she would; but she was a 
proud woman, who would far rather have been a queen 
than the wife of a courtier. She dressed herself in her 
best dress, and adorned herself with her richest jewels ; 
'and when the king came, presently, he discovered the 
cheat. So, he caused his false friend, Athelwold, to be 
murdered in a wood, and married his widow, this bad 
Elfrida. Six or seven years afterwards, he died; and 
was buried, as if he had been all that the monks said he 
was, in the abbey of Glastonbury, which he — or Duntau 
for him— had much enriched. 



82 A CHILD'S EISTOBT OF ENGLAND. 

England, in one part of this reign, was so troubled by 
wolves, which, driven out of the open country, hid them- 
selves in the mountains of Wales when they were not 
attacking travellers and animals, that the tribute payable 
by the Welsh people was forgiven them, on condition of 
their producing, every year, three hundred wolves' heads. 
And the Welshmen were so sharp upon the wolves, to 
save their money, that in four years there was not a wolf 
left. 

Then came the boy-king, Edward, called the Martyr, 
from the manner of his death. Elfrida had a son, named 
Ethelred, for whom she claimed the throne ; but Dunstan 
did not choose to favor him, and he made Edward king. 
The boy was hunting, one day, down in Dorsetshire, when 
he rode near to Corfe Castle, where Elfrida and Ethelred 
lived. Wishing to see them kindly, he rode away from 
his attendants and galloped to the castle gate, where he 
arrived at twilight, and blew his hunting-horn. "You 
are welcome, dear king," said Elfrida, coming out with 
her brightest smiles. " Pray you dismount and enter." 
— "Not so, dear madam," said the king. "My company 
will miss me, and fear that I have met with some harm. 
Please you to give me a cup of wine, that I may drink 
here, in the saddle, to you and to my little brother, and 
so ride away with the good speed I have made in riding 
here." Elfrida, going in to bring the wine, whispered 
an armed servant, one of her attendants, who stole out 
of the darkening gateway, and crept round behind the 
king's horse. As the king raised his cup to his lips, say- 
ing, "Health!" to the wicked woman who was smiling 
on him, and to his innocent brother whose hand she held 
in hers, and who was only ten years old, this armed man 
made a spring and stabbed him in the back. He dropped 
the cup and spurred his horse away; but, soon fainting 
with loss of blood, dropped from the saddle, and, in his 
fall, entangled one of his feet in the stirrup. The fright- 
ened horse dashed on ; trailing his rider's curls upon the 
ground; dragging his smooth young face through ruts, 
and stones, and briers, and fallen leaves, and mud ; untiJ 
the hunters, tracking the animal's course by the king's 
blood, caught his bridle, and released the disfigured body. 

Then came the sixth and last of the boy-kings, Ethel- 
eed, whom Elfrida, when he cried out at the sight of his 



A CHILD'S HISTORY Off ENGLAND. 8S 

murdered brother riding away from the castle gate, un- 
mercifully beat with a torch which she snatched from 
one of the attendants. The people so disliked this boy, 
on account of his cruel mother and the murder she had 
done to promote him, that Dunstan would not have had 
him for king, but would have made Edgitha, the daughter 
of the dead King Edgar, and of the lady whom he stole 
out of the convent at Wilton, Queen of England, if she 
would have consented. But she knew the stories of the 
youthful kings too well, and would not be persuaded 
from the convent where she lived in peace; so, Dunstan 
put Ethelred on the throne, having no one else to put 
there, and gave him the nickname of The Unready — 
knowing that he wanted resolution and firmness. 

At first, Elfrida possessed great influence over the 
young king, but, as he grew older and came of age, her 
influence declined. The infamous woman, not having it 
in her power to do any more evil, then retired from court, 
and according to the fashion of the time, built churches 
and monasteries, to expiate her guilt. As if a church, 
with a steeple reaching to the very stars, would have 
been any sign of true repentance for the blood of the poor 
boy, whose murdered form was trailed at his horse's heels ! 
As if she could have buried her wickedness beneath the 
senseless stones of the whole world, piled up one upon 
another, for the monks to Mve in ! 

About the ninth or tenth year of this reign, Dunstan 
died. He was growing old then, but was as stern and 
artful as ever. Two circumstances that happened in 
connection with him, in this reign of Ethelred, made a 
great noise. Once he was present at a meeting of the 
Church, when the question was discussed whether priests 
should have permission to marry, and, as he sat with his 
head hung down, apparently thinking about it, a voice 
seemed to come out of a crucifix in the room, and warn 
the meeting to be of his opinion. This was some jug- 
gling of Dunstan's, and was probably his own voice dis- 
guised. But he played off a worse juggle than that, soon 
afterwards; for, another meeting being held on the same 
subject, and he and his supporters being seated on one 
side of a great room, and their opponents on the other, 
he rose and said, "To Christ himself, as Judge, do I com- 
mit this cause ! " Immediately on these words being 
3 



34 A CBIL&S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

spoken, the floor where the opposite party sat gave way, 
and some were killed and many wounded. You may be 
pretty sure it hed been weakened under Dunstan's direc- 
tions, and that it fell at Dunstan's signal. Mis part of 
the floor did not go down. No, no. He was too good a 
workman for that. 

When he died, the monks settled that he was a Saint, 
and called him Saint Dunstan ever afterwards. They 
might just as well have settled that he was a coach-horse, 
and could just as easily have called him one. 

Ethelred the Unready was glad enough, I dare say, to 
be rid of this holy saint ; but, left to himself, he was a 
poor weak king, and his reign was a reign of defeat and 
shame. The restless Danes, led by Sweyn, a son of the 
king of Denmark, who had quarrelled with his father and 
been banished from home, again came into England, and, 
year after year, attacked and despoiled large towns. To 
coax these sea-kings away, the weak Ethelred paid them 
money; but, the more money he paid, the more money the 
Danes wanted. At first he gave them ten thousand 
pounds ; on their next invasion, sixteen thousand pounds ; 
on their next invasion, four and twenty thousand pounds ; 
to pay which large sums, the unfortunate English people 
were heavily taxed. But, as the Danes still came back 
and wanted more, he thought it would be a good plan to 
marry into some powerful foreign family, that would 
help him with soldiers. So in the year one thousand and 
two, he courted and married Emma, the sister of Richard 
Duke of Normandy ; a lady who was called the Flower 
of Normandy. 

And now, a terrible deed was done in England, the like 
of which was never done on English ground, before or 
since. On the thirteenth of November, in pursuance of 
secret instructions sent by the king over the whole coun- 
try, the inhabitants of every town and city armed, and 
murdered all the Danes who were their neighbors. 
Young and old, babies and soldiers, men and women, 
every Dane was killed. No doubt there were among 
them many ferocious men who had done the English 
great wrong, and whose pride and insolence, in swagger- 
ing in the houses of the English and insulting their wives 
and daughters, had become unbearable ; but no doubt 
there were also among them many peaceful Christian 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 33 

Danes who had married English women and become like 
English men. They were all slain, even to Gunhilda, 
the sister of the King of Denmark, married to an English 
lord ; who was first obliged to see the murder of her 
husband-and her child, and then was killed herself. 

When the king of the sea-kings heard of this deed of 
blood, he swore that he would have a great revenge. He 
raised an army, and a mightier fleet of ships than ever 
yet had sailed to England ; and in all his army there was 
not a slave or an old man, but every soldier was a free 
man, and the son of a free man, and in the prime of life, 
and sworn to be revenged upon the English nation, for 
the massacre of that dread thirteenth of November, when 
his countrymen and countrywomen, and the little children 
whom they loved, were killed with fire and sword. And 
so, the sea-kings came to England in many great ships, 
each bearing the flag of its own commander. Golden 
eagles, ravens, dragons, dolphins, beasts of prey, threat- 
ened England from the prows of those ships, as they 
came onward through the water ; and were reflected in 
the shining shields that hung upon their sides. The ship 
that bore the standard of the king of the sea kings was 
carved and painted like a mighty serpent; and the King 
in his anger prayed that the gods in whom he trusted 
might all desert him, if his serpent did not strike its 
fangs into England's heart. 

And indeed it did. For, the great army landing from 
the great fleet, near Exeter, went forward, laying England 
waste, and striking their lances in the earth as they ad- 
vanced, or throwing them into rivers, in token of their 
making all the island theirs. In remembrance of the 
black November night when the Danes were murdered* 
wheresoever the invaders came, they made the Saxons 
prepare and spread for them great feasts ; and when they 
had eaten those feasts, and had drunk a curse to England 
with wild rejoicings, they drew their swords, and killed 
their Saxon entertainers, and marched on. For six long- 
years they carried on this war ; burning the crops, farm- 
houses, barns, mills, granaries ; killing the laborers in 
the fields ; preventing the seed from being sown in the 
ground; causing famine and starvation; leaving only 
heaps of ruin and smoking ashes, where they had found 
rich towns. To crown this misery English officers and 



^o A CHILD'S HISfOBT OF ENGLAND. 

men deserted, and even the favorites of Ethelred the Un- 
ready, becoming traitors, seized many of the English ships, 
turned pirates against their own country, and aided by a 
storm occasioned the loss of nearly the whole English 
navy. 

There was but one man of note, at this miserable pass, 
who was true to his country and the feeble king. He 
whs a priest, and a brave one. For twenty days, the 
Archbishop of Canterbury defended that city against its 
Danish besiegers ; and when a traitor in the town threw 
the gates open and admitted them, he said, in chains, "I 
will not buy my life with money that must be extorted 
from the suffering people. Do with me what you please ! " 
Again and again, he steadily refused to purchase his re- 
lease with gold wrung from the poor. 

At last, the Danes being tired of this, and being as- 
sembled at a drunken merry-making, had him brought 
into the feasting-hall. 

" Now, bishop," they said, " we want gold ! " 

He looked round on the crowd of angry faces ; from the 
shaggy beards close to him, to the shaggy beards against 
the walls, where men were mounted on tables and forms 
to see him over the heads of others : and he knew that 
his time was come. 

" I have no gold," said he. 

" Get it, bishop ! " they all thundered. 

"That, I have often told you, I wilt not," said he. 

They gathered closer round him, threatening, but he 
stood unmoved. Then, one man struck him; then, an- 
other ; then a cursing soldier picked up from a heap in a 
corner of the hall, where fragments had been rudely 
thrown at dinner, a great oxbone, and cast it at his face, 
from which the blood came spurting forth ; then, others 
ran to the same heap, and knocked him down with other 
bones, and bruised and battered him; until one soldier 
whom he had baptized (willing, as I hope for the sake of 
that soldier's soul, to shorten the sufferings of the good 
man) struck him dead with his battle-axe. 

If Ethelred had had the heart to emulate the courage of 
this noble archbishop, he might have done something yet. 
But he paid the Danes forty-eight thousand pounds, instead, 
and gained so little by the cowardly act, that Sweyn soon 
afterwards came over to subdue all England. So broken 



A CHIL&& B I STORY OF ENGLAND. 37 

was the attachment of the English people, by this time, 
to their incapable king and their forlorn country which 
could not protect them, .hat they welcomed Sweyn on all 
sides, as a deliverer. London faithfully stood out, as long 
as the king was within its walls; but, when he sneaked 
away, it also welcomed the Dane. Then, all was over ; 
and the king took refuge abroad with the Duke of Nor- 
mandy, who had already given shelter to the king's wife, 
once the flower of that country, and to her children. 

Still, the English people, in spite of their sad suffer- 
ings, could not quite forget the great King Alfred and the 
Saxon race. When Sweyn died suddenly, in little more 
than a month after he had been proclaimed King of Eng- 
land, they generously sent to Ethelred, to say that they 
would have him for their king again, "if he would only 
govern them better than he had governed them before." 
The Unready, instead of coming himself, sent Edward, 
one of his sons, to make promises for him. At last, he 
followed, and the English declared him king. The Danes 
declared Canute, the son of Sweyn, king. Thus, direful 
war began again, and lasted for three years, when the 
Unready died. And I know of nothing better that he 
did, in all his reign of eight and thirty years. 

Was Canute to be king now ? Not over the Saxons, 
they said ; they must have Edmund, one of the sons of the 
Unready, who was surnamed Ironside, because of his 
strength and stature. Edmund and Canute thereupon 
fell to, and fought five battles — O unhappy England, what 
a fighting-ground it was! — and then Ironside, who was a 
big man, proposed to Canute, who was a little man, that 
they two should fight it out in single combat. If Ca- 
nute had been the big man, he would probably have said 
yes, but, being the little man, he decidedly said no. How-, 
ever, he declared that he was willing to divide the king, 
dom — to take all that lay north of Watling Street, as th« 
old Roman military road from Dover to Chester wa$ 
called, and to give Ironside all that lay south of it. Most 
men being weary of so much bloodshed, this was done. 
But Canute soon became sole King of England ! foj 
Ironside died suddenly within two months. Some think 
that he was killed, and killed by Canute's orders. Nc 
one knows. 



38 A CHILD'S B1ST0BY OF ENGLAND. 



CHAPTER V. 

ENGLAND UNDER CANUTE THE DANE. 

Canute reigned eighteen years. He was a merciless 
king at first. After he had clasped the hands of the 
Saxon chiefs, in token of the sincerity with which he 
swore to be just and good to them in return F or their 
acknowledging him, he denounced and slew many of them, 
as well as many relations of the late king. "He who 
brings me the head of one of my enemies," he used to 
say, " shall be dearer to me -than a brother." And he was 
so severe in hunting down his enemies, that he must have 
got together a pretty large family of these dear brothers. 
He was strongly inclined to kill Edmund and Edward, 
two children, sons of poor Ironside ; but, being afraid to 
do so in England, he sent them over to the King of 
Sweden, with a request that the king would be so good as 
" dispose of them." If the King of Sweden had been like 
many, many other men of that day, he would have had 
their innocent throats cut ; but he was a kind man, and 
brought them up tenderly. 

Normandy ran much in Canute's mind. In Normandy 
were the two children of the late king — Edward and 
Alfred by name ; and their uncle the Duke might one 
day claim the crown for them. But the Duke showed so 
little inclination to do so now, that he proposed to Canute 
to marry his sister, the widow of the Unready; who, 
being but a showy flower and caring for nothing so much 
as becoming a queen again, left her children and was 
wedded to him. 

Successful and triumphant, assisted by the valor of the 
English in his foreign wars, and with little strife to trouble 
him at home, Canute had a prosperous reign, and made 
many improvements. He was a poet and a musician. 
He grew sorry, as he grew older, for the blood he had 
shed at first ; and went to Rome in a Pilgrim's dress, by 
w' y of washing it out. He gave a great deal of money 
tf foreigners on his journey, but he took it from the 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 39 

English before he started. On the whole, however, he 
certainly became a far better man when he had no op- 
position to contend with, and was as great a king as 
England had known for some time. 

The old writers of history relate how that Canute was 

one day disgusted with his courtiers for their flattery, 

and how he caused his chair to be set on the seashore, 

and feigned to command the tide as it came up not to 

wet the edge of his robe, for the land was his ; how the 

tide came up, of course, without regarding him ; and 

how he then turned to his flatterers, and rebuked them, 

saying, what was the might of any earthly king, to the 

might of the Creator, who could say unto the sea, " Thus 

far shalt thou go, and no farther! " We may learn from 

this, I think, that a little sense will go a long way in a 

king ; and that courtiers are not easily cured of flattery, 

nor kings of a liking for it. If the courtiers of Canute 

had not known, long before, that the king was fond of 

flattery, they would have known better than to offer it 

in such large doses. And if they had not known that he 

was vain of this speech (anything but a wonderful speech 

it seems to me, if a good child had made it), they would 

not have been at such great pains to repeat it. I fancy 

I see them all on the seashore together; the king's chair 

sinking in the sand ; the king in a mighty good-humor 

with his own wisdom ; and the courtiers pretending to be 

quite stunned by it ! 

It is not the sea alone that is bidden to go " thus far, 
and no farther." The great command goes forth to all 
the kings upon the earth, and went to Canute in the year 
one thousand and thirty-five, and stretched him dead 
upon his bed. Beside it, stood his Norman wife. Per- 
haps, as the king looked his last upon her, he, who 
had so often thought distrustfully of Normandy, long ago, 
thought once more of the two exiled Princes in their 
uncle's court, and of the little favor they could feel for 
either Danes or Saxons, and of a rising cloud in Nor- 
mandy that slowly moved towards England. 



40 A CHILD' S HISTOR Y OF ENGLAND. 



CHAPTER VI. 

ENGLAND UNDER HAEOLD HAREFOOT, HARDICANUTE, ANB 
EDWARD THE CONFESSOR. 

Canute left three sons, by name Sweyn, Harold, and 
Hardicanute; but bis Queen, Emma, once the Flower 
of Normandy, was the mother of only Hardicanute. 
Canute had wished his dominions to be divided between 
the three, and had wished Harold to have England; but 
the Saxon people in the South of England, headed by a 
nobleman with great possessions, called the powerful 
Earl Godwin (who is said to have been originally a poor 
cowboy), opposed this, and desired to have, instead, either 
Hardicanute, or one of the two exiled Princes who were 
over in Normandy. Tt seemed so certain that there 
would be more bloodshed to settle this dispute, that many 
people left their homes and took refuge in the woods and 
swamps. Happily, however, it was agreed to refer the 
whole question to a great meeting at Oxford, which de- 
cided that Harold should have all the country north of 
the Thames, with London for his capital city, and that 
Hardicanute should have all the south. The quarrel was 
so arranged ; and, as Hardicanute was in Denmark trou- 
bling himself very little about anything but eating and 
getting drunk, his mother and Earl Godwin governed the 
south for him. 

They had hardly begun to do so, and the trembling 
people who had hidden themselves were scarcely at home 
again, when Edward, the elder of the two exiled Princes, 
came over from Normandy with a few followers, to 
claim the English Crown. His mother Emma, however, 
who only cared for her last son Hardicanute, instead of 
assisting him, as he expected, opposed him so strongly 
with all her influence that lie was very soon glad to get 
safely buck. His brother Alfred was not so fortunate. 
Believing in an affectionate letter, written some time 
afterwards to him and his brother, in his mother's name 
(but whether really with or without his mother's knowl- 



A CHILD'S HISTOBY OF ENGLAND. 41 

edge is now uncertain), he allowed himself to be tempted 
over to England, with a good force of soldiers, and land- 
ing on the Kentish coast, and being met and welcomed 
by Earl Godwin, proceeded into Surrey, as far as the 
town of Guildford. Here, he and his men halted in the 
evening to rest, having still the Earl in their company 
who had ordered lodgings and good cheer for them. 
But, in the dead of the night, when they were off their 
guard, being divided into small parties sleeping soundly 
after a long march and a plentiful supper in different 
houses, they were set upon by the King's troops and 
taken prisoners. Next morning they were drawn out in 
a line, to the number of six hundred men, and were bar- 
barously tortured and killed; with the exception of every 
tenth man, who was sold into slavery. As to the 
wretched Prince Alfred, he was stripped naked, tied to a 
horse, and sent away into the Isle of Ely, where his eyes 
were torn out of his head, and where in a few days he 
miserably died. I am not sure that the Earl had wilfully 
entrapped him, but I suspect it strongly. 

Harold was now King all over England, though it is 
doubtful whether the Archbishop of Canterbury (the 
greater part of the priests were Saxons, and not friendly 
to the Danes) ever consented to crown him. Crowned or 
uncrowned, with the Archbishop's leave or without it, he 
was King for four years : after which short reign he died, 
and was buried; having never done much in life but go 
a hunting. He was such a fast runner at this, his favorite 
sport, that the people called him Harold Harefoot. 

Hardicanute was then at Bruges, in Flanders, plotting, 
with his step-mother Emma (who had gone over there 
after the cruel murder of Prince Alfred), for the invasion 
of England. The Danes and Saxons, finding themselves 
without a King, and dreading new disputes, made com- 
mon cause, and joined in inviting him to occupy the 
Throne. He consented, and soon troubled them enough ; 
for he brought over numbers of Danes, and taxed the people 
so insnpportably to enrich those greedy favorites that 
there were many insurrections, especially one at Worces- 
ter, where the citizens rose and killed his tax-collectors ; 
in revenge for which he burned their city. He was a brutal 
King, whose first public act was to order the dead body of 
poor Harold Harefoot to be dug up, beheaded, and thrown 



42 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

into the river. His' end was worthy of such a beginning. 
He fell down drunk, with a goblet of wine in his hand, at 
a wedding-feast at Lambeth, given in honor of the mar- 
riage of his standard-bearer, a Dane named Towed the 
Proud. And he never spoke again. 

Edward, afterwards called by the monks The Con- 
fessor, succeeded ; and his first act was to oblige his 
mother Emma who had favored him so little, to retire 
into the country ; where she died some ten years after- 
wards. He was the exiled prince whose brother Alfred 
had been so foully killed. He had been invited over 
from Normandy by Hardicanute, in the course of his 
short reign of two years, and had been handsomely 
treated at court. His cause was now favoreu by the 
powerful Earl Godwin, and he was soon made King. 
This Earl had been suspected by the people, ever since 
Prince Alfred's cruel death; he had even been tried in 
the last reign for the Prince's murder, but had been pro- 
nounced not guilty ; chiefly, as it was supposed, because 
of a present he had made to the swinish King, of a gilded 
ship with a figure-head of solid gold, and a crew of eighty 
splendidly armed men. It was his interest to help the 
new King with his power, if the new King would help 
him against the popular distrust and hatred. So they 
made a bargain. Edward the Confessor got the Throne. 
The Earl got more power and more land, and his daugh- 
ter Edith was made queen; for it was a part of their 
compact that the King should take her for his wife. 

But, although she was a gentle lady, in all things 
worthy to be beloved — good, beautiful, sensible, and kind 
—the King from the first neglected her. Her father and 
her six proud brothers, resenting this cold treatment, 
harassed the King greatly by exerting all their power 
to make him unpopular. Having lived so long in Nor- 
mandy, he preferred the Normans to the English. He 
made a Norman Archbishop, and Norman Bishops ; his 
great officers and favorites were all Normans ; he intro- 
duced the Norman fashions and the Norman language ; 
in imitation of the state custom of Normandy, he at- 
tached a great seal to his state documents, instead of 
merely marking them, as the Saxon Kings had done, with 
the sign of the cross — just as poor people who have never 
been taught to write, now make the same mark for their 



A CHILD'S HISTOBY OF ENGLAND. 43 

names. All this, the powerful Earl Godwin and his six 
proud sons represented to the people as disfavor shown 
towards the English ; and thus they daily increased their 
own power, and daily diminished the power of the 
King. 

They were greatly helped by an event that occurred 
when he had reigned eight years. Eustace, Earl of Bou- 
logne, who had married the King's sister, came to Eng- 
land on a visit. After staying at the court some time, 
he set forth, with his numerous train of attendants, to 
return home. They were to embark at Dover. Enter- 
ing that peaceful town in armor, they took possession of 
the best nouses, and noisily demanded to be lodged and 
entertained without payment. One of the bold men of 
Dover, who would not endure to have these domineering 
strangers jingling their heavy swords and iron corselets 
up and down his house, eating his meat and drinking his 
strong liquor, stood in his doorway and refused admis- 
sion to the first armed man who came there. The armed 
man drew, and wounded him. The man of Dover struck 
the armed man dead. Intelligence of what he had done, 
spreading through the streets to where the Count Eustace 
and his men were standing by their horses, bridle in 
hand, they passionately mounted, galloped to the house, 
surrounded it, forced their way in (the doors and win- 
dows being closed when they came up), and killed the 
man of Dover at his own fireside. They then clattered 
through the streets, cutting down and riding over men, 
women, and children. This did not last long, you may 
believe. The men of Dover set upon them with great 
fury, killed nineteen of the foreigners, wounded many 
more, and, blockading the road to the port, so that they 
should not embark, beat them out of the town by the 
way they had come. Hereupon, Count Eustace rides as 
hard as man can ride to Gloucester, where Edward is, 
surrounded by Norman monks and Norman lords. 
" Justice ! " cries the Count, " upon the men of Dover, 
who have set upon and slain my people ! " The King 
sends immediately for the powerful Earl Godwin, who 
happens to be near ; reminds him that Dover is under 
his government ; and orders him to repair to Dover and 
do military execution on the inhabitants. " It does not 
become you," says the proud Earl in reply, " to condemn 



44 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

without a hearing those whom you have sworn to pro- 
tect. I will not do it." 

The king, therefore, summoned the Earl, on pain of 
banishment and the loss of his titles -and property, to 
appear before the court to answer this disobedience. The 
Earl refused to appear. He, his eldest son Harold, and 
his second son Sweyn, hastily raised as many righting 
men as their utmost power could collect, and demanded 
to have Count Eustace and his followers surrendered to 
the justice of the country. The King, in his turn, refused 
to give them up, and raised a strong force. After some 
treaty and delay, the troops of the great Earl and his 
sons began to fall off. The Earl, with a part of his family 
and abundance of treasure, sailed to Flanders ; Harold 
escaped to Ireland; and the power of the great family 
was for that time gone in England. But, the people did 
not forget them. 

Then, Edward the Confessor, with the true meanness 
of a mean spirit, visited his dislike of the once powerful 
father and sons upon the helpless daughter and sister, 
his unoffending wife, whom all who saw her (her husband 
and his monks excepted) loved. He seized rapaciously 
upon her fortune and her jewels, and allowing her only 
one attendant, confined her in a gloomy convent, of 
which a sister of his — no doubt an unpleasant lady after 
his own heart — was abbess or jailer. 

Having got Earl Godwin and his six sons well out of 
his way, the King favored the Normans more than ever. 
He invited over Willam, Duke of Nokmandy, the son of 
that Duke who had received him and his murdered 
brother long ago, and of a peasant girl, a tanner's daugh- 
ter, with whom that Duke had fallen in love for her 
beauty as he saw her washing clothes in a brook. Wil- 
liam, who was a great warrior, with a passion for fine 
horses, dogs, and arms, accepted the invitation ; and the 
Normans in England, finding themselves more numerous 
than ever when he arrived with his retinue, and held in 
still greater honor at court than before, became more and 
more hausrhty towards the people, and were more and 
more disliked by them. 

The old Earl Godwin, though he was abroad, knew well 
how the people felt ; for, with part of the treasure he had 
carried away with him, he kept spies and agents in his 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 45 

pay all over England. Accordingly, he thought the time 
was come for fitting out a great expedition against the 
Norman-loving King. With it, he sailed to the Isle of 
Wight, where he was joined by his son Harold, the most 
gallant and brave of all his family. And so the father 
and son c;ame sailing up the Thames to South wark; great 
numbers- of the people declaring for t hem, and shouting 
for the 'English Earl and the English Harold, against the 
Norman, favorites ! 

The jKing was at first as blind and stubborn as kings 
usually have been whensoever they have been in the 
hands-, of monks. But the people rallied so thickly round 
the o * )ld Earl and his son, and the old Earl was so steady 
in demanding without bloodshed the restoration of him- 
self and his family to their rights, that at last the Court 
toj^ok the alarm. The Norman Archbishop of Canterbury, 
ar id the Norman Bishop of London, surrounded by their 
1 detainers, fought their way out of London, and escaped 
f A-om Essex to France in a fishing-boat. The other Nor- 
^nan favorites dispersed in all directions. The old Earl 
w and his sons (except Sweyn, who had committed crimes 
f against the law) were restored to their possessions and 
dignities. Editha, the virtuous and lovely queen of the 
insensible King, was triumphantly released from her 
prison, the convent, and once more sat in her chair of 
state, arrayed in the jewels of which, when she had no 
champion ito support her rights, her cold-blooded husband 
had deprived her. 

The old Earl Godwin did not long enjoy his restored 
fortune. He fell down in a fit at the King's table, and 
died upon the third day afterwards. Harold succeeded 
to his power, and to a far higher place in the attachment 
of the people than his father had ever held. By his valor 
he subdued the King's enemies in many bloody fights. 
He was vigorous against rebels in Scotland — this was 
the time when Macbeth slew Duncan, upon which event 
our Enolish Shakespeare, hundreds of years afterwards, 
wrote his great tragedy ; and he killed the restless Welsh 
King Griffith-, and brought his head to England. 

What Harold was doing at sea, when he was driven on 
the French coast by a tempest, is not at all certain ; nor 
does it at all matter. That his ship was forced by a storm 
pn that shore, and that he was talten prisoner, there Is 



46 A COLD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

no doubt. In those barbarous days, all shipwrecked 
strangers were taken prisoners, and obliged to pay 
ransom. So, a certain Count Guy, who was the Lord of 
Ponthieu where Harold's disaster happened, seized him, 
instead of relieving him like a hospitable and Christian 
lord as he ought to have done, and expected to make a 
very good thing of it. \ 

But Harold sent off immediately to Duke WiLjiam of 
Normandy complaining of this treatment; and thie Duke 
no sooner heard of it than he ordered Harold to be escorted 
to the ancient town of Rouen, where he then wa$3, and 
where he received him as an honored guest. Now, .some 
writers tell us that Edward the Confessor, who wais by 
this time old and had no children, had made a vvill, 
appointing Duke William of Normandy his successor, aVid 
had informed the Duke of his having done so. There is 
no doubt that he was anxious about his successor ; because 
he had even invited over, from abroad, Edward the Out - 
law, a son of Ironside, who had come to England witl 1 
his wife and three children, but whom the King had I 
strangely refused to see when he did come, and who had 
died in London suddenly (princes were terribly liable to 
sudden death in those days), and had been buried in Saint 
Paul's Cathedral. The King might possibly have made 
such a will; or, having always been fond of the Normans, 
he might have encouraged Norman William to aspire to 
the English crown, by something that he said to him 
when he was staying at the English court. But, certainly 
William did now aspire to it; and knowing that Harold 
would be a powerful rival, he called together a great 
assembly of his nobles, offered Harold his daughter Adele 
in marriage, informed him that he meant on King Edward's 
death to claim the English crown as his own inheritance, 
and required Harold then and there to swear to aid him. 
Harold, being in the Duke's power, took this oath upon 
the Missal, or prayer-book. It is a good example of the 
superstitions of the monks, that this Missal, instead of 
being placed upon a table was placed upon a tub ; which, 
when Harold had sworn, was uncovered, and shown to 
be full of dead men's bones — bones, as the monks pre- 
tended, of saints. This was supposed to make Harold's 
oath a great deal more impressive and binding. As if 
the great n-ame of the Creator of Heaven and Earth could 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 47 

be made more solemn by a knuckle-bone, or a double 
tooth, or a finger-nail, of Dunstan ! 

Within a week or two after Harold's return to England, 
the dreary old Confessor was found to be dying. After 
wandering in his mind like a very weak old man, he died. 
As he had put himself entirely in the hands of the monks 
when he was alive, they praised him lustily when he was 
dead. They had gone so far, already, as to persuade him 
that he ' could work miracles ; and had brought people 
afflicted]! with a bad disorder of the skin, to him, to be 
touehe/d and cured. This was called " touching for the 
King's^ Evil," which afterwards became a royal custom. 
You know, however, Who really touched the sick, and 
heal ed them ; and you know His sacred name is not among 
the- dusty line of human kings. 

/ 

r 

| CHAPTER VII. 

ENGLAND UNDER HAROLD THE SECOND, AND CONQUERED BY 
THE NORMANS. 

Harold was crowned King of England on the very 
day of the maudlin Confessor's funeral. He had good need 
to be quick about it. When the news reached Norman 
William hunting in his park at Rouen, he dropped his 
bow, returned to his palace, called his nobles to council, 
and presently sent ambassadors to Harold, calling on him 
to keep his oath and resign the Crown. Harold would 
do no such thing. The barons of France leagued together 
round Duke William for the invasion of England. Duke 
William promised freely to distribute English wealth and 
English lands among them. The Pope sent to Normandy 
a consecrated banner, and a ring containing a hair which 
he warranted to have grown on the head of Saint Peter. 
He blessed the enterprise; and cursed Harold; and 
requested that the Normans would pay "Peter's Pence" 
— or a tax to himself of a penny a year on every house— 
a little more regularly in future, if they could make it 
convenient. 

King Harold had a rebel brother in Flanders, who was 
a vassal of Harold Hardrada, King of Norway. This 



48 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

brother, and this Norwegian King, joining their forces 
against England, with Duke William's help*, won a fight 
in which the English were commanded by\two nobles; 
and then besieged York. Harold, who was i waiting for 
the Normans on the coast at Hastings, with, his army, 
marched to Stamford Bridge upon the river 3>)erwent to 
give them instant battle. 

He found them drawn up in a hollow circle, marked ou ^ 
by their shining spears. Riding round this cir^ e a ^ a 
distance, to survey it, he saw a brave figure on horf'^b* 10 ^ 
in a blue mantle and a bright helmet, whose horsV s sud " 
denly stumbled and threw him. 

" Who is that man who has fallen ? " Harold aske v b ; d of 
one of his captains. 

" The King of Norway," he replied. a ' 

" He is a tall and stately king," said Harold, " but h ^ s 
end is near." 

He added, in a little while, "Go yonder to my brother? "' 
and tell him, if he withdraw his troops, he shall be Earl / 
of Northumberland, and rich and powerful in England." , 

The captain rode away and gave the message. 

" What will he give to my friend the King of Norway ? " 
asked the brother. 

" Seven feet of earth for a grave," replied the captain. 

"No more?" returned the brother, with a smile. 

" The King of Norway being a tall man, perhaps a little 
more," replied the captain. 

" Ride back ! " said the brother, " and tell King Harold 
to make ready for the fight! " 

He did so, very soon. And such a fight King Harold 
led against that force, that his brother, and the Norwe- 
gian King, and every chief of note in all their host, except 
the Norwegian King's son, Olave, to whom he gave hon- 
orable dismissal, were left dead upon the field. The vic- 
torious army marched to York. As King Harold sat there 
at the feast, in the midst of all his company, a stir was 
heard at the doors ; and messengers all covered with mire 
from riding far and fast through broken ground came 
hurrying in, to report that the Normans had landed in 
England. 

The intelligence was true. They had been tossed about 
by contrary winds, and some of their ships had been 
wrecked. A part of their own shore, to which they had 



A CHILD' S B1ST0B T OF ENGLAND. 49 

been driven back, was strewn with Norman bodies. But 
they had once more made sail, led by the Duke's own gal- 
ley, a present from his wife, upon the prow whereof the 
figure of a golden boy stood pointing towards England. 
By day, the banner of the three Lions of Normandy, the 
diverse colored sails, the gilded vanes, the many decora- 
tions of this gorgeous ship, had glittered in the sun and 
sunny water; by night, a light had sparkled like a star 
at her masthead. And now, encamped near Hastings, 
with their leader lying in the old Roman Castle of Peven- 
sey, the English retiring in all directions, the land for 
miles around scorched and smoking, fired and pillaged, 
was the whole Norman power, hopeful and strong on Eng- 
lish ground. 

Harold broke up the feast and hurried to London. 
Within a week, his army was ready. He sent out spies 
to ascertain the Norman strength. William took them, 
caused them to be led through his whole camp, and then 
dismissed. The Normans," said these spies to Harold, 
"are not bearded on the upper lip as we English are, but 
are shorn. They are priests." — " My men," replied Harold 
with a laugh, " will find those priests good soldiers ! " 

"The Saxons," reported Duke William's outposts of 
Norman soldiers, who were instructed to retire as King 
Harold's army advanced, "rush on us through their pil- 
laged country with the fury of madmen." 

"Let them come, and come soon! " said Duke William. 

Some proposals for a reconciliation were made, but were 
soon abandoned. In the middle of the month of October, 
in the year one thousand and sixty-six, the Normans and 
the English came front to front. All night the armies 
lay encamped before each other, in a part of the country 
then called Senlac, now called (in remembrance of them) 
Battle. With the first dawn of day, they arose. There, 
in the faint light, were the English on a hill ; a wood be- 
hind them; in their midst, the Royal banner, represent- 
ing a fighting warrior, woven in gold thread, adorned 
with precious stones; beneath the banner, as it rustled 
in the wind, stood King Harold on foot, with two of his 
remaining brothers by his side; around them, still and 
silent, as the dead, clustered the whole English army — 
every soldier covered by his shield, and bearing in his 
hand his dreaded English battle-axe. 



50 A CHlLD h S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

On an opposite hill, in three lines, archers, foot-soldiers, 
horsemen, was the Norman force. Of a sudden, a great 
battle-cry, " God help us ! " burst from the Norman lines. 
The English answered with their own battle-cry, " God's 
Rood ! Holy Rood ! " The Normans then came sweep-' 
ing down the hill to attack the English. 

There was one tall Norman Knight who rode before the 
Norman army on a prancing horse, throwing up his heavy 
sword and catching it, and singing of the bravery of his 
countrymen. An English Knight, who rode out from the 
English force to meet him, fell by this Knight's hand. 
Another English Knight rode out, and he fell too. But 
then a third rode out, and killed the Norman. This was 
in the first beginning of the fight. It soon raged every- 
where. 

The English, keeping side by side in a great mass, 
cared no more for the showers of Norman arrows than if 
they had been showers of Norman rain. When the Nor- 
man horsemen rode against them, with their battle-axes 
they cut men and horses down. The Normans gave way. 
The English pressed forward. A cry went forth among 
the Norman troops that Duke William was killed. Duke 
William took off his helmet, in order that his face might 
be distinctly seen, and rode along the line before his men. 
This gave them courage. As they turned again to face 
the English, some of their Norman horse divided the pur- 
suing body of the English from the rest, and thus all that 
foremost portion of the English army fell, righting 
bravely. The main body still remaining firm, heedless of 
the Norman arrows, and with their battle-axes cutting 
down the crowds of horsemen when they rode up, like 
forests of young trees, Duke William pretended to re- 
treat. The eager English followed. The Norman army 
closed again, and fell upon them with great slaughter. 

" Still," said Duke William, " there are thousands of the 
English, firm as rocks around their King. Shoot upward, 
Norman archers, that your arrows may fall down upon 
their faces ! " 

The sun rose high and sank, and the battle still raged. 
Through all the wild October day, the clash and din re- 
sounded in the air. In the red sunset, and in the white 
moonlight, heaps upon heaps of dead men lay strewn, a 
dreadful spectacle, all over the ground. King Harold, 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 51 

wounded with an arrow in the eye, was nearly blind* 
His brothers were already killed. Twenty Norman 
Knights, whose battered armor had flashed fiery and 
golden* in the sunshine all day long, and now looked sil- 
very in the moonlight, dashed, forward to seize the Royal 
banner from the English Knights and soldiers, still faith- 
fully collected round their blinded King. The King re- 
ceived a mortal wound, and dropped. The English broke 
and fled. The Normans rallied, and the day was lost. 

O what a sight beneath the moon and stars, when lights 
were shining in the tent of the victorious Duke William, 
which was pitched near the spot where Harold fell — and 
he and his knights were carousing, within — and soldiers 
with torches, going slowly to and fro, without, sought for 
the corpse of Harold among piles of dead — and the War- 
rior, worked in golden thread and precious stones, lay 
low, all torn and soiled with blood — and the three Nor- 
man Lions kept watch over the field ! 



CHAPTER VIII. 

ENGLAND UNDER WILLIAM THE FIRST, THE NORMAN 
CONQUEROR. 

Upon the ground where the brave Harold fell, William 
the Norman afterwards founded an abbey, which, under 
the name of Battle Abbey, was a rich and splendid place 
through many a troubled year, though now it is a gray 
ruin overgrown with ivy. But the first work he had to 
do, was to conquer the English thoroughly ; and that, as 
you know by this time, was hard work for any man. 

He ravaged several counties ; he burnt and plundered 
many towns; he laid waste scores upon scores of miles 
of pleasant country; he destroyed innumerable lives. 
At length Stigand, Archbishop of Canterbury, with other 
representatives of the clergy and the people, went to his 
camp, and submitted to him. Edgar, the insignificant 
son of Edmund Ironside, was proclaimed King by others, 
but nothing came of it. He fled to Scotland afterwards, 
where his sister, who was young and beautiful, married 
the Scottish King. Edgar himself was not important 
enough for anybody to care much about him. 



52 -4 CHILD'S HISTORY OF JENGLANB. 

On Christmas Day, William was crowned in West. 
minster Abbey, under the title of William the First; 
but he is best known as William the Conqueror. It 
was a strange coronation. One of the bishops who per- 
formed the ceremony asked the Normans, in French, if 
they would have Duke William for their king? They 
answered Yes. Another of the bishops put the same 
question to the Saxons, in English. They too answered 
Yes, with a loud shout. The noise being heard by a 
guard of Norman horse-soldiers outside, was mistaken 
for resistance on the part of the English. The guard in- 
stantly set fire to the neighboring houses, and a tumult 
ensued; in the midst of which the King, being left alone 
in the Abbey, with a few priests (and they all being in 
a terrible fright together), was hurriedly crowned. When 
the crown was placed upon his head, he swore to govern 
the English as well as the best of their own monarchs. 
I dare say you think, as I do, that if we except the Great 
Alfred, he might easily have done that. 

Numbers of the English nobles had been killed in the 
last disastrous battle. Their estates, and the estates of 
all the nobles who had fought against him there, King 
William seized upon and gave to his own Norman knights 
and nobles. Many great English families of the present 
time acquired their English lands in this way, and are 
very proud of it. 

But what is got by force must be maintained by force. 
These nobles were obliged to build castles all over Eng- 
land, to defend their new property ; and, do what he 
would, the King could neither soothe nor quell the nation 
as he wished. He gradually introduced the Norman 
language and the Norman customs; yet for a long time 
the great body of the English remained sullen and re- 
vengeful. On his going over to Normandy, to visit his 
subjects there, the oppressions of his half-brother Odo, 
whom he left in charge of his English kingdom, drove 
the people mad. The men of Kent even invited over, to 
take possession of Dover, their old enemy Count Eustace 
of Boulogne, who had led the fray when the Dover man 
was slain at his own fireside. The men of Hereford, 
aided by the Welsh, and commanded by a chief named 
Edric the Wild, drove the Normans out of their country. 
Some of those who had been dispossessed of their lands, 



A OBlt&S HISTORY Otf ENGLAND. 53 

banded together in the North of England; some, in 
Scotland ; some, in the thick woods and marshes ; and 
whensoever they could fall upon the Normans, or upon 
the English who had submitted to the Normans, they 
fought, despoiled, and murdered like the desperate out- 
laws that they were. Conspiracies were set on foot for 
a general massacre of the Normans, like the old massacre 
of the Danes. In short, the English were in a murderous 
mood all through the kingdom. 

King William, fearing he might lose his conquest, came 
back, and tried to pacify the London people by soft 
words. He then set forth to repress the country people 
by stern deeds. Among the towns which he besieged, 
and where he killed and maimed the inhabitants without 
any distinction, sparing none, young or old, armed or 
unarmed, were Oxford, Warwick, Leicester, Nottingham, 
Derby, Lincoln, York. In all these places, and in many 
others, fire and sword worked their utmost horrors, and 
made the land dreadful to behold. The streams and 
rivers were discolored with blood ; the sky was blackened 
with smoke ; the fields were wastes of ashes ; the way- 
sides were heaped up with dead. Such are the fatal 
results of conquest and ambition ! Although William was 
a harsh and angry man, I do not suppose that he deliber- 
ately meant to work this shocking ruin, when he invaded 
England. But, what he had got by the strong hand he 
could only keep by the strong hand, and in so doing he 
made England a great grave. 

Two sons of Harold, by name Edmund and Godwin, 
came over from Ireland, with some ships, against the 
Normans, but were defeated. This was scarcely done, 
when the outlaws in the woods so harassed York, that 
the Governor sent to the King for help. The King de- 
spatched a general and a large force to occupy the town 
of Durham. The Bishop of that place met the general 
outside the town, and warned him not to enter, as he 
would be in danger there. The general cared nothing for 
the warning, and went in with all his men. That night, 
on every hill within sight of Durham, signal fires were 
seen to blaze. When the morning dawned, the English, 
who had assembled in great strength, forced the gates, 
rushed into the town, and slew the Normans every one. 
The English afterwards besought the Danes to come and 



54 A CHILD'S BISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

help them. The Danes came, with two hundred and 
forty ships. The outlawed nobles joined them; they 
captured York, and drove the Normans out of that city. 
Then, William bribed the Danes to go away ; and took 
such vengeance on the English, that all the former fire 
and sword, smoke and ashes, death and ruin, were noth- 
ing compared with it. In melancholy songs, and doleful 
stories, it was still sung and told by cottage fires on 
winter evenings, a hundred years afterwards, how in 
those dreadful days of the Normans, there was not, from 
the River Humber to the River Tyne, one inhabited village 
left, nor one cultivated field — how there was nothing but 
a dismal ruin, where the human creatures and the beasts 
lay dead together. 

The outlaws had, at this time, what they called a Camp 
of Refuge, in the midst of the fens of Cambridgeshire. Pro- 
tected by those marshy grounds which were difficult of 
approach, they lay among the reeds and rushes, and were 
hidden by the mists that rose up from the watery earthc 
Now, there also was, at that time, over the sea in Flan- 
ders, an Englishman named Heeewaed, whose father had 
died in his absence, and whose property had been given 
to a Norman. When he heard of this wrong that had 
been done him (from such of the exiled English as 
chanced to wander into that country), he longed for re- 
venge ; and joining the outlaws in their camp of refuge, 
became their commander. He was so good a soldier, 
that the Normans supposed him to be aided by enchant- 
ment. William, even after he had made a road three 
miles in length across the Cambridgeshire marshes, on 
purpose to attack this supposed enchanter, thought it 
necessary to engage an old lady, who pretended to be a 
sorceress, to come and do a little enchantment in the 
royal cause. For this purpose she was pushed on before 
the troops in a wooden tower; but Hereward very soon 
disposed of this unfortunate sorceress, by burning her, 
tower and all. The monks of the convent of Ely near at 
hand, however, who were fond of good living, and who 
found it very uncomfortable to have the country block- 
aded and their supplies of meat and drink cutoff, showed 
the king a secret way of surprising the camp. So Here- 
ward was soon defeated. Whether he afterwards died 
quietly, or whether he was killed after killing sixteen of 



A CHILD'S BISTORT OF ENGLAND. 55 

the men who attacked him (as some old rhymes relate 
that he did), I cannot say. His defeat put an end to the 
Camp of Refuge ; and, very soon afterwards, the King, 
victorious both in Scotland and in England, quelled the 
last rebellious English noble. He then surrounded him- 
self with Norman lords enriched by the property of 
English nobles ; had a great survey made of all the land 
in England, which was entered as the property of its new 
owners, on a roll called Doomsday Book; obliged the 
people to put out their fires and candles at a certain hour 
every night, on the ringing of a bell which, was called 
the Curfew ; introduced the Norman dresses and man- 
ners ; made the Normans masters everywhere, and the 
English, servants ; turned out the English bishops, and 
put Normans in their places, and showed himself to be 
the Conqueror indeed. 

But, even with his own Normans, he had a restless life. 
They were always hungering and thirsting for the riches 
of the English; and the more he gave, the more they 
wanted. His priests were as greedy as his soldiers. We 
know of only one Norman who plainly told his master, 
the King, that he had come with him to England to do 
his duty as a faithful servant, and that property taken 
by force from other men had no charms for him. His 
name was Gutlbert. We should not forget his name, 
for it is good to remember and to honor honest men. 

Besides all these troubles, William the Conqueror was 
troubled by quarrels among his sons. He had three liv- 
ing, Robert, called Curthose, because of his short legs; 
William, called Rufus or the Red, from the color of his 
hair; and Henry, fond of learning, and called, in the 
Norman language, Beauclerc, or Fine-Scholar. When 
Robert grew up, he asked of his father the government 
of Normandy, which he had nominally possessed, as a 
child under his mother Matilda. The King refusing 
to grant it Robert became jealous and discontented 
and happening one clay, while in this temper, to be ridi- 
culed by his brothers, who threw water on him from a 
balcony as he was walking before the door, he drew his 
sword, rushed upstairs, and was only prevented by the 
King himself from putting them to death. That same 
night, he hotly departed with some followers "from his 
father's court, and endeavored to take the Castle of Rouen 



06 A CMIL&S UlSfOttt OF ENGLAND. 

by surprise. Failing in this, he shut himself up in another 
castle in Normandy, which the King besieged, and where 
Robert one day unhorsed and nearly killed him without 
knowing who he was. His submission when he discov- 
ered his father and the intercession of the queen and others 
reconciled them ; but not soundly ; for Robert soon 
strayed abroad, and went from court to court with his 
complaints. He was a gay, careless, thoughtless fellow, 
spending all he got on musicians and dancers; but his 
mother loved him, and often, against the King's com- 
mand, supplied him with money through a messenger 
named Samson. At length the incensed King swore he 
would tear out Samson's eyes; and Samson, thinking that 
his only hope of safety was in becoming a monk, became 
one, went on such errands no more, and kept his eyes in 
his head. 

All this time, from the turbulent day of his strange 
coronation, the Conqueror had been struggling, you see, 
at any cost, of cruelty and bloodshed, to maintain what he 
had seized. All his reign, he struggled still, with the 
same object ever before him. He was a stern bold man, 
and he succeeded in it. 

He loved money, and was particular in his eating, but 
he had only leisure to indulge one other passion, and that 
was his love of hunting. He carried it to such a height 
that he ordered whole villages and towns to be swept 
away to make forests for the deer. Not satisfied with 
sixty-eight Royal Forests, he laid waste an immense 
track of country, to form another in Hampshire, called 
The New Forest. The many thousands of miserable 
peasants who saw their little houses pulled down, and 
themselves and children turned into the open country 
without a shelter, detested him for this merciless addi- 
tion to their many sufferings; and when, in the twenty- 
first year of his reign (which proved to be the last) he 
went over to Rouen, England wms as full of hatred 
against him, as if every leaf on every tree in all his Royal 
Forests had been a curse upon his head. In the New 
Forest, his son Richard (for he had four sons) had been 
gored to death by a Stag; and the people said that this 
so cruelly made Forest would yet be fatal to others of 
the Conqueror's race. 

He was engaged in a dispute with the King of France 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 67 

about some territory. While he stayed at Rouen, nego- 
tiating with that King, he kept his bed and took medi- 
cines : being advised by his physicians to do so, on ac- 
count of having grown to an unwieldy size. Word be- 
ing brought to him that the King of France made light 
of this, and joked about it, he swore in a great rage that 
he should rue his jests. He assembled his army, marched 
into the disputed territory, burnt — his old way ! — the 
vines, the crops, and fruit, and set the town of Mantes 
on fire. But, in an evil hour ; for, as he rode over 
the hot ruins, his horse, setting his hoofs upon some 
burning embers, started, threw him forward against the 
pommel of the saddle, and gave him a mortal hurt. For 
six weeks he lay dying in a monastery near Rouen, and 
then made his will, giving England to William, Normandy 
to Robert, and five thousand pounds to Henry. And 
now, his violent deeds lay heavy on his mind. He or- 
dered money to be given to many English churches and 
monasteries, and — which was much better repentance — 
released his prisoners of state, some of whom had been 
confine^, in his dungeons twenty years. 

It was a September morning, and the sun was rising, 
when the King was awakened from slumber by the sound 
of a church bell. "What bell is that?" he faintly asked. 
They told him it was the bell of the chapel of Saint Mary 
"I commend my soul," said he, "to Mary ! " and died. 

Think of his name, The Conqueror, and then consider 
how he lay in death ! The moment he was dead, his phy- 
sicians, priests, and nobles, not knowing what contest for 
the throne might now take place, or what might happen 
in it, hastened away, each man for himself and his own 
property ; the mercenary servants of the court began to 
rob and plunder; the body of the King, in the indecent 
strife, was rolled from the bed, and lay alone, for hours, 
upon the ground. O Conqueror, of whom so many great 
names are proud now, of whom so many great names 
thought nothing then, it were better to have conquered 
one true heart, than England ! 

By and by, the priests came creeping in with prayers 
and candles; and a good knight, named Heeluin, under- 
took (which no one else would do) to convey the body to 
Caen, in Normandy, in order that it might be buried in 
6t, Stephen's church there, which the Conqueror bad 



58 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

founded. But fire, of which he had made such bad use 
in his life seemed to follow him of itself in death. A 
great conflagration broke out in the town when the body 
was placed in the church; and those present running out 
to extinguish the flames, it was once again left alone. 

It was not even buried in peace. It was about to be 
let down, in its Royal robes, into a tomb near the high 
altar, in presence of a great concourse of people, when a 
loud voice in the crowd cried out, " This ground is mine ! 
Upon it stood my father's house. This King despoiled, 
me of both ground and house to build this church. In 
the great name of God, I here forbid his body to be cov- 
ered with the earth that is my right ! " The priests and 
bishops present, knowing the speaker's right, and know- 
ing that the King had often denied him justice, paid him 
down sixty shillings for the grave. Even then the corpse 
was not at rest. The tomb was too small, and they tried 
to force it in. It broke, a dreadful smell arose, the peo- 
ple hurried out into the air, and, for the third time, it 
was left alone. 

Where were the Conqueror's three sons, that they were 
not at their father's burial? Robert was lounging among 
minstrels, dancers, and gamesters, in France or Germany. 
Henry was carrying his five thousand pounds safely away 
in a convenient chest he had got made. William the Red 
was hurrying to England, to lay hands upon the Royal 
treasure and the crown. 



CHAPTER IX. 

ENGLAND UNDER WILLIAM THE SECOND, CALLED KTTFT7S. 

William the Red, in breathless haste, secured the 
three great forts of Dover, Pevensey, and Hastings, and 
made with hot speed for Winchester, where the Royal 
treasure was kept. The treasurer delivering him the 
keys, he found that it amounted to \sixty thousand 
pounds in silver, besides gold and jewels. Possessed of 
this wealth, lie soon persuaded the Archbishop of Canter- 
bury to crown him, and became William the Second, King 
of England, 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 59 

Rufus was no sooner on the throne, than he ordered 
into prison again the unhappy state captives whom his 
father had set free, and directed a goldsmith to ornament 
his father's tomb profusely with gold and silver. It 
would have been more dutiful in him to have attended 
the sick Conqueror when he was dying; but England, 
itself, like this Red King, who once governed it, has 
sometimes made expensive tombs for dead men whom it 
treated shabbily when they were alive. 

The King's brother, Robert of Normandy, seeming quite 
content to be only Duke of that country ; and the King's 
other brother, Fine- Scholar, being quiet enough with his 
five thousand pounds in a chest ; the King flattered him- 
self, we may suppose, with the hope of an easy reign. 
But easy reigns were difficult to have in those days. The 
turbulent Bishop Odo (who had blessed the Norman army 
at the Battle of Hastings, and who, I dare say, took all 
the credit of the victory to himself) soon began, in concert 
with some powerful Norman nobles, to trouble the Red 
King. 

The truth seems to be that this bishop and his friends, 
who had lands in England and lands in Normandy, wished 
to hold both under one Sovereign ; and greatly preferred 
a thoughtless good-natured person, such as Robert was, 
to Rufus ; who, though far from being an amiable man 
in any respect, was keen, and not to be imposed upon. 
They declared in Robert's favor, and retired to their 
castles (these castles were very troublesome to Kings) in 
a sullen humor. The Red King, seeing the Normans thus 
falling from him, revenged himself upon them by appeal- 
ing to the English; to whom he made a variety of prom- 
ises which he never meant to perform — in particular 
promises to soften the cruelty of the Forest Laws ; and 
who, in return, so aided him- with their valor, that Odo 
was besieged in the Castle of Rochester, and forced to 
abandon it, and to depart from England forever ; where- 
upon the other rebellious Norman nobles were soon 
reduced and scattered. 

Then, the Red King went over to Normandy, where 
the people suffered greatly under the loose rule of Duke 
Robert. The King's object was to seize upon the Duke's 
dominions. This, the Duke, of course, prepared to resist ; 
and miserable war between the two brothers seemed 



60 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

inevitable, when the powerful nobles on both sides, who 
had seen so much of war, interfered to prevent it. A 
treaty was made. Each of the two brothers agreed to 
give up something of his claims, and that the longer-liver 
of the two should inherit all the dominions of the other. 
When they had come to this loving understanding, they 
embraced and joined their forces against Fine-Scholar; 
who had bought some territory of Robert with part of his 
five thousand pounds, and was considered a dangerous 
individual in consequence. 

St. Michael's Mount in Normandy (there is another St. 
Michael's Mount, in Cornwall, wonderfully like it), was 
then as it is now, a strong place perched upon the top of 
a high rock, around which, when the tide is in, the sea 
flows, leaving no road to the mainland. In this place, 
Fine-Scholar shut himself up with his soldiers, and here 
he was closely besieged by his two brothers. At one time, 
when he was reduced to great distress for want of water, 
the generous Robert not only permitted his men to get 
water, but sent Fine-Scholar wine from his own table; 
and on being remonstrated with by the Red King, said, 
"What! shall we let our own brother die of thirst! 
Where shall we get another, when he is gone!" At 
another time, the Red King, riding alone on the shore of 
the bay, looking up at the Castle, was taken by two of 
Fine-Scholar's men, one of whom was about to kill him, 
when he cried out, " Hold, knave ! I am the King of 
England ! " The story says that the soldier raised him 
from the ground respectfully and humbly, and that the 
King took him into his service. The story may or may 
not be true ; but at any rate it is true that Fine-Scholar 
could not hold out against his united brothers, and that 
he abandoned Mount St. Michael, and wandered about — 
as poor and forlorn as other scholars have been sometimes 
known to be. 

The Scotch became unquiet in the Red King's time, 
and were twice defeated — the second time with the loss 
of their King, Malcolm, and his son. The Welsh became 
unquiet too. Against them, Rufus was less successful ; 
for they fought among their native mountains, and did 
great execution on the King's troops. Robert of Nor- 
mandy became unquiet too; and, complaining that his 
brother the King did not faithfully perform his part of 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 61 

their agreement, took up arms, and obtained assistance 
from the King of France, whom Rufus, in the end, bought 
off with .vast sums of money. England became unquiet 
too. Lord Mowbray, the powerful Earl of Northumber- 
land, headed a great conspiracy to depose the King, and 
to place upon the throne, Stephen, the Conqueror's 
nephew. The plot was discovered ; all the chief conspir- 
ators were seized ; some were fined, some were put in 
prison, some were put to death. The Earl of Northum- 
berland himself was shut up in a dungeon beneath 
Windsor Castle, where he died, an old man, thirty long 
years afterwards. The Priests in England were more un- 
quiet than any other class or power; for the Red King 
treated them with such small ceremony that he refused 
to appoint new bishops or archbishops when the old ones 
died, but kept all the wealth belonging to those offices, ill 
his own hands. In return for this, the Priests wrote his 
life when he was dead, and abused him well. I am in- 
clined to think, myself, that there was little to choose 
between the Priests and the Red King ; that both sides 
were greedy and designing; and that they were fairly 
matched. 

The Red King was false of heart, selfish, covetous, and 
mean, fie had a worthy minister in his favorite, Ralph, 
nicknamed — for til most every famous person had a nick- 
name in those rough days — Flambard, or the Firebrand. 
Once the King, being ill, became penitent, and made 
Anselm, a foreign priest and a good man, Archbishop of 
Canterbury. But he no sooner got well again, than he 
repented of his repentance, and persisted in wrongfully 
keeping to himself some of the wealth belonging to the 
archbishopric. This led to violent disputes, "which were 
aggravated by there being in Rome at that time two rival 
Popes; each of whom declared he was the only real 
original infallible Pope, who couldn't make a mistake. 
At last Anselm, knowing the Red King's character, and 
not feeling himself safe in England, asked leave to return 
abroad. The Red King gladly gave it ; for he knew 
that as soon as Anselm was gone, he could begin to store 
up all the Canterbury money again for his own use. 

By such means, and by taxing and oppressing the 
English people in every possible way, the Red King be- 
came very rich* When he wanted money for any purpose, 



62 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND, 

he raised it by some means or other, and cared nothing 
for the injustice he did, or the misery he caused. Having 
the opportunity of buying from Robert the whole duchy 
of Normandy for five years, he taxed the English people 
more than ever, and made the very convents sell their 
plate and valuables to supply him with the means to make 
the purchase. But he was as quick and eager in putting 
down revolt as he was in raising money ; for, a part of 
the Norman people objecting — very naturally, I think — to 
being sold in this way, he headed an army against them 
with all the speed and energy of his father. He was so 
impatient, that he embarked for Normandy in a great gale 
of wind. And when the sailors told him it was dangerous 
to go to sea in such angry weather, he replied, " Hoist 
sail and away ! Did you ever hear of a king who was 
drowned?" 

You will wonder how it was that even the careless 
Robert came to sell his dominions. It happened thus. 
It had long been the custom for many English people to 
make journeys to Jerusalem, which were called pilgrim- 
ages, in order that they might pray beside the tomb of 
Our Saviour there. Jerusalem belonging to the Turks, 
and the Turks hating Christianity, these Christian travel- 
lers were often insulted and ill-used. The Pilgrims bore 
it patiently for some time ; but at length a remarkable 
man, of great earnestness and eloquence, called Peter 
the Hermit, began to preach in various places against 
the Turks, and to declare that it was the duty of good 
Christians to drive away those unbelievers from the tomb 
of Our Saviour, and to take possession of it and protect 
it. An excitement such as the world had never known 
before was created. Thousands and thousands of men of 
all ranks and conditions departed for Jerusalem to make 
war against the Turks. The war was called in history 
the first Crusade ; and every Crusader wore a cross 
marked on his right shoulder. 

All the Crusaders were not zealous Christians. Among 
them were vast numbers of the restless, idle, profligate, 
and adventurous spirits of the time. Some became 
Crusaders for the love of change ; some, in the hope of 
plunder; some, because they had nothing to do at home ; 
some, because they did what the priests told them ; some, 
because they liked to see foreign countries; some, 



A CHILD' S HISTOR Y OF ENGLAND. 63 

because they were fond of knocking men about, and would 
as soon knock a Turk about as a Christian. Robert of 
Normandy may have been influenced by all these motives ; 
and by a kind desire, besides, to save the Christian Pil- 
grims from bad treatment in future. He wanted to raise 
a number of armed men, and to go to the Crusade. He 
could not do so without money. He had no money; and 
he sold his dominions to his brother, the Red King, for 
five years. With the large sum he thus obtained, he 
fitted out his Crusaders gallantly, and went away to Jeru- 
salem in martial state. The Red King, who made money 
out of everything, stayed at home busily squeezing more 
money out of Normans and English. 

After three years of great hardship and suffering — from 
shipwreck at sea; from travel in strange lands; from 
hunger, thirst, and fever, upon the burning sands of the 
desert ; and from the fury of the Turks — the valiant 
Crusaders got possession of Our Saviour's tomb. The 
Turks were still resisting and fighting bravely, but this 
success increased the general desire in Europe to join the 
Crusade. Another great French Duke was proposing to 
sell his dominions for a term to the rich Red King, when 
the Red King's reign came to. a sudden and violent end. 

You have not forgotten the New Forest which the Con- 
queror made, and which the miserable people whose homes 
he had laid waste, so hated. The cruelty of the Forest 
Laws, and the torture and death they brought upon the 
peasantry, increased this hatred. The poor persecuted 
country people believed that the New Forest was en- 
chanted. They said that in thunder-storms, and on dark 
nights, demons appeared, moving beneath the branches 
of the gloomy trees. They said that a terrible spectre 
had foretold to Norman hunters that the Red King should 
be punished there. And now, in the pleasant season of 
May, when the Red King had reigned almost thirteen 
years ; and a second Prince of the Conqueror's blood — 
another Richard, the son of Duke Robert — was killed by 
an arrow in this dreaded Forest ; the people said that the 
second time was not the last, and that there was another 
death to come. 

It was a lonely forest, accursed in the people's hearts for 
the wicked deeds that had been done to make it; and no 
man save the King and his Courtiers and Huntsroen 5 liked 



64 A CHILD'S HISTOBT OF ENGLAND. 

to stray there. But, in reality, it was like any othtlc 
forest. In the spring, the green leaves broke out of the 
buds; in the summer, flourished heartily, and made deep 
shades; in the winter, shrivelled and blew down, and lay 
in brown heaps on the moss. Some trees were stately, 
and grew high and strong; some had fallen of themselves ; 
some were felled by the forester's axe ; some were hollow, 
and the rabbits burrowed at their roots; some few were 
struck by lightning, and stood white and bare. There 
were hillsides covered with rich fern, on which the morn- 
ing dew so beautifully sparkled; there were brooks, 
where the deer went down to drink, or over which the 
whole herd bounded, flying from the arrows of the hunts- 
men; there were sunny glades, and solemn places where 
but little light came through the rustling leaves. The 
songs of the birds in the New Forest were pleasanter to 
hear than the shouts of fighting men outside ; and even 
when the Red King and his Court came hunting through 
its solitudes, cursing loud and riding hard, with a jingling 
of stirrups and bridles and knives, and daggers, they did 
much less harm there than among the English or Normans, 
and the stags died (as they lived) far easier than the 
people. 

Upon a day in August, the Red King, now reconciled 
to his brother, Fine-Scholar, came with a great train to 
hunt in the New Forest. Fine-Scholar was of the party. 
They were a merry party, and had lain all night at Mal- 
wood-Keep, a hunting-lodge in the forest, where they had 
made good cheer, both at supper and breakfast, and had 
drunk a deal of wine. The party dispersed in various 
directions, as the custom of hunters then was. The King 
took with him only Sir Walter Tyrrel, who was a 
famous sportsman, and to whom he had given, before they 
mounted horse that morning, two fine arrows. 

The last time the King was ever seen alive, he was rid- 
ing with Sir Walter Tyrrel, and their dogs were hunting 
together. 

It was almost night, when a poor charcoal-burner, pass- 
ing through the Forest with his cart, came upon a solitary 
body of a dead man, shot with an arrow in the breast, 
and still bleeding. He got it into his cart. It was the 
body of the King. Shaken and tumbled, with its red 
beard all whitened with lime and clotted with blood, it 



A CHILD'S BISTORT OF ENGLAND. 65 

was driven in the cavt by the charcoal-burner next day to 
Winchester Cathedral where it was received and buried. 

Sir Walter Tyrrel, who escaped to Normandy, and 
claimed the protection of the King of Fnmce, swore hi 
France that the Red King was suddenly shot dead by an 
arrow from an unseen hand, while they were hunting 
together; that he was fearful of being suspected as i lie 
King's murderer; and that he instantly set spurs to his 
horse, and fled to the seashore. Others declared that the 
King and Sir Walter Tyrrel were hunting in company, a 
little before sunset, standing in bushes opposite one an- 
other, when a stag came between them. That the King 
drew his bow and took aim, but the string broke. That 
the King then cried, " Shoot,Walter, in the Devil's name ! " 
That Sir Walter shot. That the arrow glanced against a 
tree, was turned aside from the stag, and struck the King 
from his horse, dead. 

By whose hand the Red King really fell, and whether 
that hand despatched the arrow to his breast by accident 
or by design, is only known to God. Some think his 
brother may have caused him to be killed ; but the Red 
King had made so many enemies, both among priests and 
people, that suspicion may reasonably rest upon a less 
unnatural murderer. Men know no more than that he 
was found dead in the New Forest, which the suffering 
people had regarded as a doomed ground for his race. 



CHAPTER X. 

ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE FIRST, CALLED EINE-SCHOLAR. 

Fine-Scholar, on hearing of the Red King's Death, hur- 
ried to Winchester with as much speed as Rufus himself 
had made, to seize the Royal treasure. But the keeper 
of the treasure, who had been one of the hunting-party in 
the Forest, made haste to Winchester too, and, arriving 
there at about the same time, refused to yield it up. 
Upon this, Fine-scholar drew his sword, and threatened 
to kill the treasurer; who might have paid for his fidelity 
with his life, but that he knew longer resistance to be 



66 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

useless when he found the Prince supported by a com- 
pany of powerful barons, who declared they were deter- 
mined to make him King. The treasurer, therefore, gave 
up the money and jewels of the Crown ; and on the third 
day after the death of the Red King, being a Sunday, 
Fine-Scholar stood before the high altar in Westminster 
Abbey, and made a solemn declaration that he would re- 
sign the church property which his brother had seized ; 
that he would do no wrong to the nobles ; and that he 
would restore to the people the laws of Edward the Con- 
fessor, with all the improvements of William the Con- 
queror. So began the reign of King Henry the First. 

The people were attached to their new King, both be- 
cause he had known distresses, and because lie was an 
Englishman by birth and not a Norman. To strengthen 
this last hold upon them, the King wished to marry an 
English lady ; and could think of no other wife than Maud 
the Good, the daughter of the King of Scotland. Al- 
though this good Princess did not love the king, she was 
so affected by the representations the nobles made to her 
of the great charity it would be in her to unite the Nor- 
man and Saxon races, and prevent hatred and bloodshed 
between them for the future, that she consented to be- 
come his wife. After some disputing among the priests, 
who said that as she had been in a convent in her youth, 
and had worn the veil of a nun, she could not lawfully be 
married — against which the Princess stated that her aunt, 
with whom she had lived in her youth, had indeed some- 
times thrown a piece of black stuff over her, but for no 
other reason than because the nun's veil was the only 
dress the conquering Normans respected in girl or woman, 
and not because she had taken the vows of a nun, which 
she never had — she was declared free to marry, and was 
made King Henry's Queen. A good Queen she was ; 
beautiful, kind-hearted, and worthy of a better husband 
than the King. 

For he was a cunning and unscrupulous man, though 
firm and clever. He cared very little for his word, and 
took any means to gain his ends. All this is shown in his 
treatment of his brother Robert— Robert, who had suffered 
him to be refreshed with water, and who had sent him the 
wine from his own table, when he was shut up, with the 
crows flying below him, parched with thirst, in the castle 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 67 

on the top of St. Michael's Mount, where his Red brother 
would have let him die. 

Before the King began to deed with Robert, he removed 
and disgraced all the favorites of the late King ; who were 
for the most part base characters, much detested by the 
people. Flambard, or Firebrand, whom the late King had 
made Bishop of Durham, of all things in the world, Henry 
imprisoned in the Tower ; but Firebrand was a great joker 
and a jolly companion, and made himself so popular with 
his guards that they pretended to know nothing about a 
long rope that was sent into his prison at the bottom of a 
deep flagon of wine. The guards took the wine, and Fire- 
brand took the rope ; with which, when they were fast 
asleep, he let himself down from a window in the night, 
and so got cleverly aboard ship and away to Normandy. 

Now Robert, when his brother Fine-Scholar came to the 
throne, was still absent in the Holy Land. Henry pre- 
tended that Robert had been made Sovereign of that 
country ; and he had been away so long, that the igno- 
rant people believed it. But, behold, when Henry had 
been some time King of England, Robert came home to 
Normandy; having leisurely returned from Jerusalem 
through Italy, in which beautiful country he had enjoyed 
himself very much, and had married a lady as beautiful 
as itself! In Normandy, he found Firebrand waiting to 
urge him to assert his claim to the English crown, and 
declare war against King Henry. This, after great loss 
of time in feasting and dancing with his beautiful Italian 
wife among his Norman friends, he at last did. 

The English in general were on King Henry's side, 
though many of the Normans were on Robert's. But the 
English sailors deserted the King, and took a great part 
of the English fleet over to Normandy ; so that Robert 
came to invade this country in no foreign vessels, but in 
English ships. The virtuous Anselm, however, whom 
Henry had invited back from abroad, and made Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, was steadfast in the King's cause; 
and it was so well supported that the two armies, instead 
of fighting made a peace. Poor Robert, who trusted any- 
body and everybody, readily trusted his brother, the King; 
and agreed to go home and receive a pension from Eng- 
land, on condition that all his followers were fully par- 
doned. This the King very faithfully promised, but 



68 A CHILD'S HISTOBY OF ENGLAND. 

Robert was no sooner gone than he began to punish 
them. 

Among them was the Earl of Shrewsbury, who, on be- 
ing summoned by the King to answer to live anil forty 
accusations, rode away to one of his strong castles, shut 
himself up therein, called around him his tenants and 
vassals, and fought for his liberty, but was defeated and 
banished. Robert, with all his faults, was so true to his 
word, that when he first heard of this nobleman having 
risen against his brother, he laid waste the Earl of Shrews- 
bury's estates in Normandy, to show the King that he 
would favor no breach of their treaty. Finding, on better 
information, afterwards, that the Earl's only crime was 
having been his friend, he came over to England, in his 
old thoughtless warm-hearted way, to intercede with the 
King, and remind him of the solemn promise to pardon 
all his followers. 

This confidence might have put the false King to the 
blush, but it did not. Pretending to be very friendly, he 
so surrounded his brother with spies and tnips, that Rob- 
ert, who was quite in his power, had nothing for it but 
to renounce his pension and escape while he could. Get- 
ting home to Normandy, and understanding the King bet- 
ter now, he naturally allied himself with his old friend 
the Earl of Shrewsbury, who had still thirty castles in 
that country. This was exactly what Henry wanted. 
He immediately declared that Robert had broken the 
treaty, and next year invaded Normandy. 

He pretended that he came to deliver the Normans, at 
their own request, from his brother's misrule. There is 
reason to fear that his misrule was bad enough ; for his 
beautiful wife had died, leaving him with an infant son, 
and his court was again so careless, dissipated, and ill- 
regulated, that it was said he sometimes lay in bed of a 
day for want of clothes to put on— his attendants having 
stolen all his dresses. But he headed his army like a 
brave prince and a gallant soldier, though he had the mis- 
fortune to be taken prisoner by King Henry, with four 
hundred of his Knights. Among them was poor harmless 
Edgar AtlieTing, who loved Robert well. Edgar was not 
important enough to be severe with. The King after- 
wards gave him a small pension, which he lived upon and 
died upon, in peace, among the quiet woods and fields of 
England. 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 69 

And Robert — poor, kind, generous, wasteful, heedless 
Robert,\vithsomany fnu Its, and yet with virtues that might 
have made abetter and a happier man — what was the end 
of him ? If the King had had the magnanimity to say with 
a kind air, "Brother, tell me, before these noblemen, that 
from this time you will be my faithful follower and friend, 
and never raise your hand against me or my forces more ! " 
•he might have trusted Robert to the death. But the King 
was not a magnanimous man. He sentenced his brother 
to be confined for life in one of the Royal Castles. In the 
beginning of his imprisonment he was allowed to ride out, 
guarded ; but he one day broke away from his guard and 
galloped off. He had the evil fortune to ride into a swamp, 
where his horse stuck fast and he was taken. When the 
King heard of it he ordered him to be blinded, which was 
done by putting a red-hot metal basin on his eyes. 

And so, in darkness and in prison, many years, he 
thought of all his past life, of the time he had wasted, of 
the treasure he had squandered, of the opportunities he 
had lost, of the youth lie had thrown away, of the talents 
he had neglected. Sometimes, on fine autumn mornings, 
he would sit and think of the old hunting parties in the 
free Forest, where he had been the foremost and the gay- 
est. Sometimes, in the still nights, he would wake, and 
mourn for the many nights that had stolen past him at the 
gaming-table; sometimes, would seem to hear upon the 
melancholy wind, the old songs of the minstrels ; some- 
times, would dream, in his blindness, of the light and 
glitter of the Norman Court. Many and many a time, he 
groped back, in his fancy, to Jerusalem, where lie had 
fought so well; or, at the head of his brave companions, 
bowed his feathered helmet to the shouts of welcome 
greeting him in Italy, and seemed again to walk among 
the sunny vineyards, or on the shore of the blue sea, with 
his lovelv wife. And then, thinking of her grave, and of 
his fatherless boy, he would stretch out his solitary arms 
and weep. 

At length, one day, there lay in prison, dead, with cruel 
and disfiguring scars upon his eyelids, bandaged from his 
jailer's sight, but on which the eternal Heavens looked 
clown, a worn old man of eighty. He had once been 
Robert of Normandy. Pity him ! 

At the time when Robert of Normandy was taken 



70 A CHILD'S HISTOBY OF ENGLAND. 

prisoner by his brother, Robert's little son was only five 
years old. This child was taken, too, and carried before 
the King, sobbing and crying ; for, young as he was, he 
knew he had good reason to be afraid of his Royal uncle. 
The King was not much accustomed to pity those who 
were in his power, but his cold heart seemed for the mo- 
ment to soften towards the boy. He was observed to 
make a great effort, as if to prevent himself from being 
cruel, and ordered the child to be taken away ; whereupon 
a certain Baron, who had married a daughter of Duke 
Robert's (by name, Helie of Saint Saen), took charge of 
him, tenderly. The King's gentleness did not last long. 
Before two years were over, he sent messengers to this 
lord's Castle to seize the child and bring him away. The 
Baron was not there at the time, but his servants were 
faithful, and carried the boy off in his sleep and hid him. 
When the Baron came home, and was told what the 
King had done, he took the child abroad, and, leading 
him by the hand, went from King to King and from 
Court to Court, relating how the child had a claim to the 
throne of England, and how his uncle the King, knowing 
that he had that claim, would have murdered him, per- 
haps, but for his escape. 

The youth and innocence of the pretty little William 
Fitz-Robeet (for that was his name) made him many 
friends at that time, when he became a young man, the 
King of France, united with the French Counts of Anjou 
and Flanders, supported his cause against the King 
of England, and took many of the King's towns and 
castles in Normandy. But, King Henry, artful and cun- 
ning always, bribed some of William's friends with 
money, some with promises, some with power. He 
bought off the Count of Anjou, by promising to marry 
his eldest son, also named William, to the Count's 
daughter ; and indeed the whole trust of this King's life 
was in such bargains, and he believed (as many another 
King has done since, and as one King did in France a 
very little time ago), that every man's truth and honor 
can be bought at some price. For all this, he was so 
afraid of William Fitz-Robert and his friends that, for a 
long time, he believed his life to be in danger ; and never lay 
down to sleep, even in his palace surrounded by his guards, 
without having a sword and buckler at his bedside. 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 71 

To strengthen his power, the King with great cere- 
mony betrothed his eldest daughter Matilda, then a 
child only eight years old, to be the wife of Henry the 
Fifth, the Emperor of Germany. To raise her marriage- 
portion, he taxed the English people in a most oppressive 
manner; then treated them to a great procession to re- 
store their good humor; and sent Matilda away, in fine 
state, with the German ambassadors, to be educated in 
the country of her future husband. 

And now his Queen, Maud the Good, unhappily died. 
It was a sad thought for that gentle lady, that the only 
hope with which she had married a man whom she had 
never loved — the hope of reconciling the Norman and 
English races — had failed. At the very time of her 
death, Normandy and all France was in arms against 
England ; for, so soon as his last danger was over, King 
Henry had been false to all the French powers he had 
promised, bribed, and bought, and they had naturally 
united against him. After some fighting, however, in 
which few suffered but the unhappy common people 
(who always suffered, whatsoever was the matter), he be- 
gan to promise, bribe, and buy again ; and by those 
means, and by the help of the Pope, who exerted himself 
to save more bloodshed, and by solemnly declaring, over 
and over again, that he really was in earnest this time, 
and would keep his word, the King made peace. 

One of the first consequences of this peace was, that 
the King went over to Normandy with his son Prince 
William and a great retinue, to have the Prince acknowl- 
edged as his successor by the Norman nobles, and to 
contract the promised marriage (this was one of the many 
promises the King had broken) between him and the 
daughter of the Count of Anjou. Both these things were 
triumphantly done, with great show and rejoicing; and 
on the twenty-fifth of November, in the year one thou- 
sand one hundred and twenty, the whole retinue pre- 
pared to embark at the Port of Barfleur, for the voyage 
home. 

On that day, and at that place, there came to the King, 
Fitz-Stephen, a sea-captain, and said, — 

"My liege, my father served your father all his life, 
upon the sea. He steered the ship with the golden boy 
upon the prow, in which your father sailed to conquer 



72 A CHILD'S HISTOBT OF ENGLAND. 

England. I beseech you to grant me the same office, I 
have a fair vessel in the harbor there called The White 
Ship, manned by fifty sailors of renown. I pray you, 
Sire, to let your servant have the honor of steering you 
in The White Ship to England ! " 
. " I am sorry, friend," replied the King, " that my ves 
sel is already chosen, and that I cannot (therefore) sail 
with the son of the man who served my father. But th 
Prince and all his company shall go along with you, in 
the fair White Ship, manned by the fifty sailors of 



! 



Aii hour or two afterwards, the King set sail in the 
vessel he had chosen, accompanied by other vessels, and, 
sailing all night with a fair and gentle wind, arrived 
upon the coast of England in the morning. While it was 
yet night, the people in some of those ships heard a faint 
wild cry come over the sea, and wondered what it was. 

Now, the Prince was a dissolute, debauched young 
man of eighteen, who bore no love to the English, and 
had declared that when he came to the throne lie would 
yoke them to the plough like oxen. He went aboard The 
White Ship, with one hundred and forty youthful Nobles 
like himself, among whom were eighteen noble ladies of 
the highest rank. All this gay company, with their serv- 
ants and the fifty sailors, made three hundred souls 
aboard the fair White Ship. 

"Give three casks of wine, Fitz-Stephen," said the 
Prince, "to the fifty sailors of renown ! My father the 
King has sailed out of the harbor. What time is there 
to make merry here and yet reach England with the 
rest?" 

" Prince," said Fitz-Stephen, "before morning my fifty 
and The White Ship shall overtake the swiftest vessel in 
attendance on your father the King, if we sail at mid- 
night!" 

Then, the Prince commanded to make merry; and the 
sailors drank out the three casks of wine ; and the Prince 
and all the noble company danced in the moonlight on 
the deck of The White Ship. 

When, at last, she shot out of the harbor of Barfleur 
there was not a sober seaman on board. But the sails 
were all set, and the oars all going merrily. Fitz-Stephen 
had the helm. The gay young nobles and the beautiful 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND, 73 

ladies, wrapped in mantles of various bright colors to 
protect them from the cold, talked, laughed, and sang. 
The Prince encouraged the fifty sailors to row harder 
yet, for the honor of The White Ship. 

Crash ! A terrific cry broke from three hundred 
hearts. It whs the cry the people in the distant vessels 
of the King heard faintly on the water. The White 
Ship had struck upon a rock — was filling— going down ! " 

Fitz-Stephen hurried the Prince into a boat, with some 
few Nobles. '• Push off," he whispered ; " and row to the 
land. It is not far, and the sea is smooth. The rest of 
us must die." 

But, as they rowed away, last, from the sinking ship, 
the Prince heard the voice of his sister Marie, the Coun- 
tess of Perche, calling for help. He never in liis life had 
been so good as he was then. He cried in an agony, 
"Row back at any risk ! I cannot bear to leave her ! " 

They rowed back. As the Prince held out his arms to 
catch his sister, such numbers leaped in, that the boat 
was overset. And in the same instant The White Ship 
went down. 

Only two men floated. They both clung to the main 
yard of the ship, which had broken from the mast, and 
now supported them. One asked the other who he was? 
He said, " I am a nobleman, Godrey by name, the son of 
Gilbert de l'Aigle. And you?" said he. " I am Ber- 
old, a poor butcher of Rouen," was the answer. Then, 
they both said together, "Lord be merciful to us both!" 
and tried to encourage one another, as they drifted in the 
cold benumbing sea on that unfortunate November night. 

By and by, another man came swimming towards them, 
whom they knew, when he pushed aside his long wet 
hair, to be Fitz-Stephen. "Where is the Prince?" said 
he. "Gone! Gone!" the two cried together. " Neither 
he, nor his brother, nor his sister, nor the King's niece, 
nor her brother, nor any one of all the brave three hun- 
dred, noble, or commoner, except we three, has risen 
above the water!" Fitz-Stephen, with a ghastly face, 
cried, "Woe! woe to me! " and sunk to the bottom. 

The other two clung to the yard for some hours. At 
length the young noble said faintly, " I am exhausted, and 
chilled with the cold, and can hold no longer. Farewell, 
good friend ! God preserve you I " So, he dropped and 



74 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

sunk ; and of all the brilliant crowd, the poor Butcher of 
Rouen alone was saved. In the morning, some fishermen 
saw him floating in his sheepskin coat, and got him into 
their boat — the sole relater of the dismal tale. 

For three days, no one dared to carry the intelligence 
to the King. At length, they sent into his presence a 
little boy, who, weeping bitterly, and kneeling at his feet, 
told him that The White Ship was lost with all on board. 
The King fell to the ground like a dead man, and never, 
never afterwards, was seen to smile. 

But he plotted again, and promised again, and bribed 
and bought again, in his old deceitful way. Having no 
son to succeed him, after all his pains (" The Prince will 
never yoke us to the plough, now ! " said the English 
people), he took a second wife — Adelais or Alice, a duke's 
daughter, and the Pope's niece. Having no more chil- 
dren, however, he proposed to the Barons to swear that 
they would recognize as his successor, his daughter Ma- 
tilda, whom, as she was now a widow, he married to the 
eldest son of the Count of Anjou, Geoffrey, surnamed 
Plantagenet, from a custom he had of wearing a sprig 
of flowering broom (called Genet in French) in his cap 
for a feather. As one false man usually makes many, 
and as a false King, in particular, is pretty certain to 
make a false Court, the Barons took the oath about the 
succession of Matilda (and her children after her), twice 
over, without in the least intending to keep it. The King 
was now relieved from any remaining fears of William 
Fitz-Robert, by his death in the Monastery of St. Omer, 
in France, at twenty-six years old, of a pike-wound in 
the hand. And as Matilda gave birth to three sons, he 
thought the succession to the throne secure. 

He spent most of the latter part of his life, which was 
troubled by family quarrels, in Normandy, to be near 
Matilda. When he had reigned upwards of thirty-five 
years, and was sixty-seven years old, he died of an indi- 
gestion and fever, brought on by eating, when he was far 
from well, of a fish called Lamprey, against which he had 
often been cautioned by his physicians. His remains were 
brought over to Reading Abbey to be buried. 

You may perhaps hear the cunning and promise-break- 
ing of King Henry the First, called "policy" by some 
people, and "diplomacy" by others. Neither of these 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 75 

fine words will in the least mean that it was true ; and 
nothing that is not true can possibly be good. 

His greatest merit, that I know of, was his love of 
teaming. 1 should have given him greater credit even 
for that, if it had been strong enough to induce him to 
spare the eyes of a certain poet he once took prisoner, 
who was a knight besides. But he ordered the poet's 
eyes to he torn from his head, because he had laughed at 
him in his verses ; and the poet, in the pain of that tort- 
ure, dashed out his own brains against his prison-wall. 
King Henry the First was avaricious, revengeful, and so 
false, that I suppose a man never lived whose word was 
less to be relied upon. 



CHAPTER XI. 

ENGLAND UNDER MATILDA AND STEPHEN. 

The King was no sooner dead, than all the plans and 

schemes he had labored at so long, and lied so much for, 

I crumbled away like a hollow heap of sand. Stephen, a 

j grandson of the Conqueror, whom he had never mistrusted 

or suspected, started up to claim the throne. 

Stephen was the son of Adela, the Conqueror's daughter, 
married to the Count of Blois. To Stephen, and to his 
brother Henry, the late King had been liberal ; making 
Henry Bishop of Winchester, and finding a good marriage 
for Stephen, and much enriching him. This did not pre- 
vent Stephen from hastily producing a false witness, a 
servant of the late King, to swear that the King had 
named him for his heir upon his death-bed. On this evi- 
dence the Archbishop of Canterbury crowned him. The 
new King, so suddenly made, lost not a moment in seizing 
the Royal treasure, and hiring foreign soldiers with some 
of it to protect his throne. 

If the dead King had even done as the false witness 
said, he would have had small right to will away the 
English people, like so many sheep or oxen, without their 
consent. But he had, in fact, bequeathed all his territory 
to Matilda ; who, supported by her brother Robert, Earl 
of Gloucester, soon began to. dispute the crown. Some of 



76 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

the powerful barons and priests took her side; some took 
Stephen's ; all fortified their castles ; and again the miser- 
able English people were involved in war, from which 
they could never, derive advantage whosoever was vic- 
torious, and in which all parties plundered, tortured, 
starved, and ruined them. 

Five years had passed since the death of Henry the 
First — and during those five years there had been two 
terrible invasions by the people of Scotland under their 
King, David, who was at last defeated with all his army 
— when Matilda, attended by her brother Robert and a 
large force, appeared in England to maintain her claim. 
A battle was fought between her troops and King 
Stephen's at Lincoln ; in which the King himself was 
taken prisoner, after bravely fighting until his battle-axe 
and sword were broken, and was carried into strict con- 
finement at Gloucester. Matilda then submitted herself 
to the Priests, and the Priests crowned her Queen of 
England. 

She did not long enjoy this dignity. The people of 
London had a great affection for Stephen; many of the 
Barons considered it degrading to be ruled by a woman ; 
and the Queen's temper was so haughty that she made 
innumerable enemies. The people of London revolted ; 
and, in alliance with the troops of Stephen, besieged her 
at Winchester, where they took her brother Robert 
prisoner, whom, as her best soldier and chief general, she 
was glad to exchange for Stephen himself, who thus re- 
gained his liberty. Then, the long war went on afresh. 
Once, she was pressed so hard in the Castle of Oxford, in 
the winter weather when the snow lay thick upon the 
ground, that her only chance of escape was to dress her- 
self all in white, and, accompanied by no more than three 
faithful Knights, dressed in like manner, that their 
figures might not be seen from Stephen's camp as they 
passed, over the snow, to steal away on foot, cross the 
frozen Thames, walk a long distance, and at last gallop 
away on horseback. All this she did, but to no great 
purpose then ; for her brother dying while the struggle 
was yet going on, she at last withdrew to Normandy. 

In two or three years after her withdrawal, her cause 
appeared in England, afresh, in the person of her sou 
Erenry, young Plantagenet, wko, at only eighteen years 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 77 

of age, was very powerful: not only on account of his 
mother having resigned all Normandy to him, but also 
from his having married Eleanor, the divorced wife of 
the French King, a bad woman, who had great possessions 
in France. Louis, the French King, not relishing this 
arrangement, helped Eustace, King Stephen's son, to 
invade Normandy; but Henry drove their united forces 
out of that country, and then returned here, to assist his 
partisans, whom the King was then besieging at Walling- 
ford upon the Thames. Here, for two days, divided only 

: by the river, the two armies lay encamped opposite to one 
another — on the eve, as it seemed to all men, of another 
desperate fight, when the Earl of Arundel took heart 

| and said "that it was not reasonable to prolong the un- 
speakable miseries of two kingdoms, to minister to the 
ambition of two princes." 
Many other noblemen repeating and supporting this 

i when it was once uttered, Stephen and young Plantagenet 
went down, each to his own bank of the river, and held 

J a conversation across it, in which they arranged a truce; 

i very much to the dissatisfaction of Eustace, who swag- 

i gered away with some followers, and laid violent bands 
on the Abbey of St. Edmund's Bury, where he presently 

! died mad. The truce led to a solemn council at Win- 
chester, in which it was agreed that Stephen should re- 
tain the crown, on condition of his declaring Henry his 
successor ; that William, another son of the King's, 
should inherit his father's rightful possessions; and that 
all the Crown lands which Stephen had given away should 
be recalled, and all the Castles be had permitted to be 
built, demolished. Thus terminated the bitter war, 
which had now lasted fifteen years, and had again laid 
England waste. In the next year Stephen died, after a 
troubled reign of nineteen years. 

Although King Stephen was, for the time in which he 
lived, a humane and moderate man, with many excellent 
qualities; and although nothing worse is known of him 
than his usurpation of the Crown, which he probably ex- 
cused to himself by the consideration that King itenry 
the First was an usurper too — which was no excuse at 
all; the people of England suffered more in these dread 
nineteen years, than at any former period even of their 
suffering history. In the division of the nobility between. 



78 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

the two rival claimants of the Crown, and in the growth 
of what is called the Feudal System (which made the 
peasants the born vassals and mere slaves of the Barons), 
every noble had his strong Castle, where he reigned the 
cruel king of all the neighboring people. Accordingly he 
perpetrated whatever cruelties he chose. And never 
were worse cruelties committed upon earth, than in 
wretched England in those nineteen years. 

The writers who were living then, describe them fear- 
fully. They say that the castles were filled with devils, 
rather than with men ; that the peasants, men and 
women, were put into dungeons for their gold and silver, 
were tortured with fire and smoke, were hung up by the 
thumbs, were hung up by the heels with great weights 
to their heads, were torn with jagged irons, killed with 
hunger, broken to death in narrow chests filled with sharp, 
pointed stones, murdered in countless fiendish ways. In 
England there was no corn, no meat, no cheese, no butter, 
there was no tilled lands, no harvests. Ashes of burnt 
towns and dreary wastes, were all that the traveller, fear- 
ful of the robbers who prowled abroad at all hours, would 
see in a long day's journey ; and from sunrise until night, 
he would not come upon a home. 

The clergy sometimes suffered, and heavily too, from 
pillage, but many of them had castles of their own, and 
fought in helmet and armor like the barons, and drew 
Jots with other fighting men for their share of booty. 
The Pope (or Bishop of Rome) on King Stephen's resist- 
ing his ambition, laid England under an Interdict at one 
period of this reign ; which means that he allowed no serv- 
ice to be performed in the churches, no couples to be 
married, no bells to be rung, no dead bodies to be buried. 
Any man having the power to refuse these -things, no 
matter whether he were called a Pope or a Poulterer, 
would, of course, have the power of afflicting numbers of 
innocent people. That nothing might be wanting to the 
miseries of King Stephen's time, the Pope threw in this 
contribution to the public store — not very like the widow's 
contribution, as I think, when Our Saviour sat in Jerusa- 
lem over against the Treasury, "and she threw in two 
mites, which make a farthing." 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



CHAPTER XII. 

ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE SECOND. 

Part the First. 

Henry Plantagenet, when he was but twenty-one 
year^-old, quietly succeeded to the throne of England, ac- 
cording to his agreement made with the late King at 
Winchester. Six weeks after Stephen's death, he and his 
queen, Eleanor, were crowned in that city; into which 
they rode on horseback in great state, side by side, amidst 
much shouting and rejoicing, and clashing of music, and 
strewing of flowers. 

The reign of King Henry the Second began well. The 
King had great possessions, and (what with his own rights, 
and what with those of his wife) was lord of one-third 
part of France. He was a young man of vigor, ability, 
and resolution, and immediately applied himself to re- 
move some of the evils which had arisen in the last un- 
happy reign. He revoked all the grants of land that had 
been hastily made, on either side, during the late strug- 
gles ; he obliged numbers of disorderly soldiers to depart 
from England; he reclaimed all the castles belonging to 
the Crown ; and he forced the wicked nobles to pull down 
their own castles, to the number of eleven hundred, in 
which such dismal cruelties had been inflicted on the peo- 
ple. The King's brother, Geoffrey, rose against him in 
France, while he was so well employed, and rendered it 
necessary for him to repair to that country; where, after 
he had subdued and made a friendly arrangement with 
his brother (who did not live long), his ambition to in- 
crease his possessions involved him in a war with the 
French King, Louis, with whom he had been on such 
friendly terms just before, that to the French King's in- 
fant daughter, then a baby in the cradle, he had promised 
one of his little sons in marriage, who was a child of five 
years old. However, the war came to nothing at last, 
&ncl the Pope made the two Kings friends again, 



80 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

Now, the clergy, in the troubles of the last reign, had 
gone on very ill indeed. There were all kinds of 
criminals among them — murderers, thieves, and vaga- 
bonds ; and the worst of the matter was, that the good 
priests would not give up the had priests to justice, when 
they committed crimes, but persisted in sheltering and 
defending them. The King, well knowing that there 
could he no peace or rest in England while such things 
lasted, resolved to reduce the power of the clergy ; and, 
when he had reigned seven years, found (as he con- 
sidered) a good opportunity for doing so, in the death of 
the Archbishop of Canterbury. "I will have for the new 
Archbishop," thought the King, "a friend in whom I can 
trust, who will help me to humble these rebellious 
priests, and to have them dealt with, when they do 
wrong, as other men who do wrong are dealt with." So, 
he resolved to make his favorite, the new Archbishop; 
and this favorite was so extraordinary a man, and his 
story is so curious, that I must tell you all about him. 

Once upon a time, a worthy merchant of London, 
named Gilbert a Becket, made a pilgrimage to the Holy 
Land, and was taken prisoner by a Saracen lord. This 
lord, who treated him kindly and not like a slave, had 
one fair daughter, who fell in love with the merchant; 
and who told him that she wanted to become a Christian, 
and was willing to marry him if they could fly to a 
Christian country. The merchant returned her love, un- 
til he found an opportunity to escape, *when he did not 
trouble himself about the Saracen lady, but escaped with 
his servant Richard, who had been taken prisoner along 
with him, and arrived in England and forgot her. The 
Saracen lady, who was more loving than the merchant, 
left her father's house in disguise to follow him, and made 
her way, under many hardships, to the seashore. The 
merchant had taught her only two English words (for I 
suppose he must have learnt the Saracen tongue himself, 
and made love in that language), of which Loxdon was 
one, and his own name, Gilbert, the other. She went 
among the ships, saying, "London! London !" over and 
over again, until the sailors understood that she wanted 
to find an English vessel that would carry her there-; so, 
they showed her such a ship, and she paid for her 
passage with some of her jewels, and sailed away. Well I 



a child's msTonr of England. 81 

The merchant was sitting in his counting-house in Lon- 
don one day, when he heard a great noise in the street; 
and presently Richard came running in from the ware- 
house, with his eyes wide open and his breath almost 
gone, saying, "Master, master, here is the Saracen 
Lilly!" The merchant thought Richard was mad ; hut 
Richard said, "No, master! As I live, the Saracen 1; cry 
is going up and down the city, calling Gilbert ! Gilbert ! " 
Then, lie took the merchant by the sleeve and pointed 
onfc at window; and there they saw her among the 
gables and waterspouts of the dark dirty street, in her 
foreign dress, so forlorn, surrounded by a wondering 
crowd, and passing slowly along, calling Gilbert ! Gilbert! 
When the merchant saw her, and thought of the tender- 
ness she had shown him in his captivity, and of her con- 
stancy, his heart was moved, and he ran down into the 
street; and she saw him coming, and with a great cry 
fainted in his arms. They were married without loss of 
time, and Richard (who was an excellent man) danced 
with joy the whole day of the wedding; and they all 
lived happy ever afterwards. 

This merchant and the Saracen lady had one son, 
Thomas a Becket. He it was who became the Favorite 
of King Henry the Second. 

He had become Chancellor, when the King thought of 
making him Archbishop, lie was clever, gay, well edu* 
cated, brave; had fought in several battles in France; 
had defeated a French knight in single combat, and 
brought his horse away as a token of the victory. He lived 
in a noble palace, he was the tutor of the young Prince 
Henry, he was served by one hundred and forty knights, 
his riches were immense. The King once sent him as 
his ambassador to France; and the French people, be- 
holding in what state he travelled, cried out in the 
streets, " How splendid must the King of England be, 
when this is only the Chancellor ! " They had good reason 
to wonder at the magnificence of Thomas a Becket, for, 
when he entered a French town, his procession was 
headed by two hundred and fifty singing boys; then, 
came his hounds in couples ; then, eight wagons, each 
drawn by five horses driven by five drivers: two of the 
wagons filled with strong ale to be given away to the peo- 
ple ; four, with his gold and silver plate and stately clothes j 
5 



82 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 






two, with the dresses of his numerous servants. Then, 
came twelve horses, each with a monkey on his back ; 
then, a train of people bearing shields and leading fine 
war-horses splendidly equipped ; then, falconers with 
hawks upon their wrists ; then, a host of knights, and 
gentlemen and priests ; then, the Chancellor with his 
brilliant garments flashing in the sun, and all the people 
capering and shouting with delight. 

The King was well pleased with all this, thinking that 
it only made himself the more magnificent to have s® 
magnificent a favorite ; but he sometimes jested with the 
Chancellor upon his splendor too. Once, when they 
were riding together through the streets of London in 
hard winter weather, they saw a shivering old man in 
rags. "Look at the poor object!" said the King. 
" Would it not be a charitable act to give that aged man 
a comfortable warm cloak?" — "Undoubtedly it would," 
said Thomas a Becket, " and you do well, Sir, to think of 
such Christian duties." — " Come ! " cried the King, " then 
give him your cloak!" It was made of rich crimson 
trimmed with ermine. The King tried to pull it off, the 
Chancellor tried to keep it on, both were near rolling from 
their saddles in the mud, when the Chancellor submitted, 
and the King gave the cloak to the old beggar : much to 
the beggar's astonishment, and much to the merriment 
of all the courtiers in attendance. For, courtiers are not 
only eager to laugh when the King laughs, but they 
really do enjoy a laugh against a Favorite. 

"I will make," thought King Henry the Second, "this 
Chancellor of mine, Thomas a Becket, Archbishop of 
Canterbury. He will then be the head of the Church, 
and, being devoted to me, will help me to correct the 
Church. He has always upheld my power against the 
power of the clergy, and once publicly told some bishops 
(I remember), that men of the Church were equally bound 
to me with men of the sword. Thomas a Becket is the man, 
of all other men in England, to help me in my great 
design." So the King, regardless of all objection, either 
that he was a righting man, or a lavish man, or a courtly 
man, or a man of pleasure, or anything but a likely man 
for the office, made him Archbishop accordingly. 

Now, Thomas a Becket was proud and loved to be 
famous. Pie was already famous for the pomp of his. 



A CHILD S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. g$ 

life, for his riches, his gold and silver plate, his wagons, 
horses, and attendants. He conld do no more in that 
way than he had done; and being tired of that kind of 
fame (wbch is a very poor one), he longed to have his 
name celebrated for something else. Nothing, he knew, 
would render him so famous in the world, as the setting 
of his utmost power and ability against the utmost power 
and ability of the King. He resolved with the whole 
strength of his mind to do it. 

He may have had some secret grudge against the 
King besides. The King may have offended his proud 
humor at some time or other, for anything I know. I 
think it likely, because it is a common thing for Kings, 
Princes, and other great people, to try the tempers of 
their favorites rather severely. Even the little affair of 
the crimson cloak must have been anything but a pleas- 
ant one to a haughty man. Thomas a Becket knew 
better than any one in England what the King expected 
of him. In all his sumptuous life, he had never yet 
been in a position to disappoint the King. He could 
take up that proud stand now, as head of the Church; 
and he determined that it should be written in history, 
either that he subdued the King, or that the King sub- 
dued him. 

So, of a sudden, he completely altered the whole 
manner of his life. He turned off all his brilliant fol- 
lowers, ate coarse food, drank bitter water, wore next 
his skin sackcloth covered with dirt and vermin (for it 
Was then thought very religious to be very dirty), flogged 
his back to punish himself, lived chiefly in a little cell, 
washed the feet of thirteen poor people every clay, and 
looked as miserable as he possibly could. If he had put 
twelve hundred monkeys on horseback instead of twelve, 
and had gone in procession with eight thousand wagons 
instead of eight, he could not have astonished the people 
half so much as by this great change. It soon caused 
him to be more talked about as an Archbishop than he 
had been as a Chancellor. 

The King was very angry ; and was made still more 
so when the new Archbishop, claiming various estates 
from the nobles as being rightfully Church property, 
required the King himself, for the same reason, to give 
up Rochester Castle, and Rochester City too. Not 



84 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGZAKfi. 

satisfied with this, he declared that no power but him* 
self should appoint a priest to any church in the part of 
England over which he was Archbishop; and when a 
certain gentleman of Kent made such an appointment, 
as he claimed to have the right to do, Thomas a Becket 
excommunicated him. 

Excommunication was, next to the Interdict I told you 
of at the close of the last chapter, the great weapon of 
the clergy. It ( onsisted in declaring the person who 
was excommunicated, an outcast from the Church and 
from all religious offices; and in cursing him all over, 
from the top of his head to the sole of his foot, whether 
he was standing up, lying down, sitting, kneeling, walk- 
ing, running, hopping, jumping, gaping, coughing, sneez- 
ing, or whatever else he was doing. This unchristian 
nonsense would of course have made no sort of differ- 
ence to the person cursed — who could say his prayers at 
home if he were shut out of church, and whom none butL 
God could judge — but for the fears and superstitions of 
the people, who avoided excommunicated persons, and 
made their lives unhappy. So, the King said to the New 
Archbishop, "Take off this Excommunication from this 
gentleman of Kent." To which the Archbishop replied, 
" I shall do no such thing." 

The quarrel went on. A priest in Worcestershire 
committed a most dreadful murder, that aroused the 
horror of the whole nation. The King demanded to have 
this wretch delivered up, to be tried in the same court 
and in the same way as any other murderer. The Arch- 
bishop refused, and kept him in the Bishop's prison. 
The King, holding a solemn assembly in Westminster 
Hall, demanded that in future all priests found guilty 
before their Bishops of crimes against the law of the 
land, should be considered priests no longer, and should 
be delivered over to the law of the land for punishment. 
The Archbishop again refused. The King required to 
know whether the clergy would obey the ancient 
customs of the country ? Every priest there, but one, 
said, after Thomas a Becket, "Saving my order." This 
really meant that they would only ohey those customs 
when they did not interfere with their own claims ~l and 
the King went out of the Hall in great wrath. 

Some of the clergy began to be afraid, now, that they 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 85 

ftrere going too far. Though Thomas a Becket was other- 
wise as unmoved as Westminster Hall, they prevailed 
upon him, for the sake of their fears, to go to the King at 
Woodstock, and promise to observe the ancient customs 
of the country, without saying anything about his order. 
The King received this submission favorably, and sum- 
moned a great council of the clergy to meet at the Castle 
of Clarendon, by Salisbury. But when this council met, 
the Archbishop again insisted on the words "saving my 
order;" and he still insisted, though lords entreated 
him, and priests wept before him and knelt to him, and 
an adjoining room was thrown open, filled with armed 
soldiers of the King, to threaten him. At length he gave 
way, for that time, and the ancient customs (which in- 
cluded what the King had demanded in vain) were stated 
in writing, and were signed and sealed by the chief of 
the clergy, and were called the Constitutions of Clarendon. 

The quarrel went on, for all that. The Archbishop 
tried to see the King. The King would not see him. 
The Archbishop tried to escape from England. The 
sailors on the coast would launch no boat to take him 
away. Then, he again resolved to do his worst in op- 
position to the King, and began openly to set the ancient 
customs at defiance. 

The King summoned him before a great council at 
Northampton, where he accused him of high treason, and 
made a claim against him, which was not a just one, for an 
enormous sum of money. Thomas a Becket was alone 
against the whole assembly, and the very Bishops advised 
him to resign his office and abandon his contest with the 
King. His great anxiety and agitation stretched him on 
a sick-bed for two days, but he was still undaunted. lie 
went to the adjourned council, carrying a great cross in 
his right hand, and sat down holding it erect before him. 
The King angrily retired into an inner room. The whole 
assembly angrily retired and left him there. But there 
he sat. The Bishops came out again in a body, and de- 
nounced him as a traitor. Tie only said, "I hear!" and 
sat there still. They retired again into the inner room, 
and his trial proceeded without him. By and by, the 
Earl of Leicester, heading the barons, came out to read 
his sentence. He refused to hear it, denied the power of 
the court, and said he would refer his cause to the Pope. 



86 A cbxl&s msTonr of England. 

As he walked out of the hall, with the cross in his hand, 
some of those present picked up rushes — rushes were 
strewn upon the floors in those days by way of carpet — ■ 
and threw thein at him. He proudly turned his head, 
and said that were he not Archbishop, he would chastise 
those cowards with the sword he had known how to use 
in bygone days. He then mounted his horse, and rode 
away, cheered and surrounded by the common people, to 
whom he threw open his house that night and gave a 
supper, supping with them himself. That same night he 
secretly departed from the town ; and so, travelling by 
night and hiding by day, and calling himself "Brother 
Dearman," got away, not without difficulty, to Flanders. 

The struggle still went on. The angry King took pos- 
session of the revenues of the archbishopric, and banished 
all the relations and servants of Thomas a Becket, to the 
number of four hundred. The Pope and the French King 
both protected him, and an abbey was assigned for his 
residence. Stimulated by this support, Thomas a Becket, 
on a great festival day, formally proceeded to a great 
church crowded with people, and going up into the pul- 
pit publicly cursed and excommunicated all who had 
supported the Constitutions of Clarendon : mentioning 
many English noblemen by name, and not distantly hint- 
ing at the King of England himself. 

When intelligence of this new affront was carried to 
the King in his chamber, his passion was so furious that 
he tore his clothes, and rolled like a madman on his bed 
of straw and rushes. But he was soon up and doing. 
He ordered all the ports and coasts of England to be 
narrowly watched, that no letters of Interdict might be 
brought into the kingdom ; and sent messengers and 
bribes to the Pope's palace at Rome. Meanwhile, 
Thomas a Becket, for his part, was not idle at Rome, but 
constantly employed his utmost arts in his own behalf. 
Thus the contest stood, until there was peace between 
France and England (which had been for some time at 
war), and until the two children of the two Kings were 
married ill celebration of it. Then, the French King 
brought about a meeting between Henry and his old 
favorite, so long his enemy. 

Even then, though Thomas & Becket knelt before the 
King, he was obstinate and immovable as to those words 



A CBIL&'S BISTORT OF ENGLAND. 81 

about his order. King" Louis of France was weak enough 
in his veneration for Thomas a Becket and such men, but 
this was a little too much for him. He said that a Becket 
" wanted to"~be greater than the saints and better than 
St. Peter," and rode away from him with the King of 
England. His poor French Majesty asked a Becket's 
pardon for so doing, however, soon afterwards, and cut a 
very pitiful figure. 

At last, and after a world of trouble, it came to this. 
There was another meeting on French ground, between 
King Henry and Thomas a Becket, and it was agreed 
that Thomas a Becket should be Archbishop of Canter- 
bury, according to the customs of former Archbishops, 
and that the King should put him in possession of the 
revenues of that post. And now, indeed, you might sup- 
pose the struggle at an end, and Thomas a Becket at 
rest. No, not even yet. For Thomas a Becket hearing, 
by some means, that King Henry, when he was in dread 
of his kingdom being placed under an interdict, had had 
his eldest son Prince Henry secretly crowned, not only 
persuaded the Pope to suspend the Archbishop of York 
who had performed that ceremony, and to excommunicate 
the Bishops who had assisted at it, but sent a messenger 
of his own into England, in spite of all the King's pre- 
cautions along the coast, who delivered the letters of ex- 
communication into the Bishops' own hands. Thomas a~ 
Becket then came over to England himself, after an 
absence of seven years. He was privately warned that 
it was dangerous to come, and that an ireful knight, 
named Ranulf de Beoc, had threatened that he should 
not live to eat a loaf of bread in England ; but he came. 

The common people received him well, and marched 
about with him in a soldierly way, armed with such rus- 
tic weapons as they could get. He tried to see the young 
prince who had once been his pupil, but was prevented. 
He hoped for some little support among the nobles and 
priests, but found none. He made the most of the 
peasants who attended him, and feasted them, and went 
from Canterbury to Harrow-on-the-Hill, and from Harrow- 
on-the-Hill back to Canterbury, and on Christmas Day 
preached in the Cathedral there, and told the people in 
his sermon that he had come to die among them, and 
that it was likely he would be murdered. He had no 



88 A CHILD'S BISTORT OF ENGLAND. 

fear, however — or, if he had any, he had much more 
obstinacy — for he, then and there, excommunicated three 
of his enemies, of whom lianulf de Broc the ireful knight 
was one. 

As men in general had no fancy for being cursed, in 
their sitting and walking, and gaping and sneezing, and 
all the rest of it, it was very natural in the persons so 
freely excommunicated to complain to the King. It was 
equally natural in the King, who had hoped that this 
troublesome opponent was at last quieted, to fall into a 
mighty rage when he heard of these new affronts; and, on 
the Archbishop of York telling him that lie never could 
hope for rest while Thomas a Becket lived, to cry out 
hastily before his court, "Have I no one here who will 
deliver me from this man!" There were four knights 
present, who, hearing the King's words, looked at one 
another, and went out. 

The names of these knights were Reginald Fitzurse, 
William Tracy, Hugh de Morville and Richard Bkito ; 
three of whom had been in the train of Thomas a Becket 
in the old days of his splendor. They rode away on horse- 
back, in a very secret manner, and on the third day after 
Christmas Day arrived at Saltwood House, not far from 
Canterbury, which belonged to the family of Ranulf de 
Broc. They quietly collected some followers here, in case 
they should need any; and proceeding to Canterbury, 
suddenly appeared (the four knights and twelve men) 
before th e Archbishop, in his own house, at two o'clock 
in the afternoon. They neither bowed nor spoke, but sat 
down on the floor in silence, staring at the Archbishop. 

Thomas a Becket said, at length, " What do you want?" 

" We want," said Reginald Fitzurse, " the excommunica- 
tion taken from the Bishops, and you to answer for your 
offences to the King." 

Thomas a Becket defiantly replied, that the power of 
the clergy was above the power of the King. That it was 
not for such men as they were, to threaten him. That if 
he were threatened by all the swords in England, he 
would never yield. 

"Then we will do more than threaten!" said the 
knights. And they went out with the twelve men, and 
put on their armor, and drew their shining swords, and 
came back. 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 89 

His servants in the mean time, had shut up and barred 
the great gate of the palace. At first, the knights tried 
to shatter it with their battle-axes; but, being shown a 
window by which they could enter, they let the gate alone, 
and climbed in, that way. While they were battering at 
the door, the attendants of Thomas a Becket had implored 
him to take refuge in the Cathedral; Jn which, as a sanc- 
tuary or sacred place, they thought the knights would 
dare to do no violent deed. He told them, again and 
again, that he would not stir. Hearing the distant voices 
of the monks singing the evening service, however, he 
said it was now his duty to attend, and therefore, and for 
no other reason, he would go. 

There was a near way between his Palace and the 
Cathedral, by some beautiful old cloisters which you 
may yet see. He went into the Cathedral, without any 
hurry, and having the Cross carried before him as usual. 
When he was safely there, his servants would have 
fastened the door, but he said No! it was the house of 
God and not a fortress. 

As he spoke, the shadow of Reginald Fitzurse appeared 
in the Cathedral doorway, darkening the little light there 
was outside, on the dark winter evening. This knight 
said, in a strong voice, "Follow me, loyal servants of the 
King!" The rattle of the armor of the other knights 
echoed through the Cathedral, as they came clashing in. 

It was so dark, in the lofty aisles and among the stately 
pillars of the church, and there were so many hiding- 
places in the crypt below and in the narrow passages 
above, that Thomas a Becket might even at that pass 
hnve saved himself if he would. But he would not. He- 
told the monks resolutely that hajvould not. And though 
they all dispersed and left him there, with no other fol- 
lower than Edward Gryme, his faithful cross-bearer, h& 
was as firm then as ever he had been in his life. 

The knights came on, through the darkness, making a 
terrible noise with their armed tread on the stone pave- 
ment of the church. " Where is the traitor ? " t hey oried 
out. He made no answer. But when they cried, " Where 
is the Archbishop?'" he said proudly, "I am here!" and 
came out of the shade and stood before them. 

The knights had no desire to kill him, if they could rid 
the King "and themselves of him by any other xnean^ 



90 A CHILD' S HISTOR Y OF ENGLAND. 

They told him he must either fly or go with them. He 
said he would do neither ; and he threw William Tracy 
off with such force when he took hold of his sleeve, that 
Tracy reeled again. By his reproaches and his steadiness, 
he so incensed them, and exasperated their fierce humor, 
that Reginald Fitzurse, whom he called by an ill name, 
said, " Then die ! " and struck at his head. But the faithful 
Edward Gryme put out his arm, and there received the 
main force of the blow, so that it only made his master 
bleed. Another voice from among the knights again 
called to Thomas a Becket to fly ; but, with his blood 
running down his face, and his hands clasped, and his 
head bent, he commended himself to God, and stood firm. 
Then, they cruelly killed him close to the altar of St. 
Bennet ; and his body fell upon the pavement, which was 
dirtied with his blood and brains. 

It is an awful thing to think of the murdered mortal, 
who had so showered his curses about, lying, all dis- 
figured, in the church, where a few lamps here and there_ 
were but red specks on a pall of darkness ; and to think" 
of the guilty knights riding away on horseback, looking 
over their shoulders at the dim Cathedral, and remember- 
ing what they had left inside. 

Part the Second. 

When the King heard how Thomas a Becket had lost 
his life in Canterbury Cathedral, through the ferocity of 
the four Knights, he was filled with dismay. Some have 
supposed that when the King spoke those hasty words, 
" Have I no one here who will deliver me from this man ! " 
he wished, and meant a Becket to be slain. But few 
things are more unlikely ; for, besides that the King was 
not naturally cruel (though very passionate), he was wise, 
and must have known full well what any stupid man in 
his dominions must have known, namely, that such a 
murder would rouse the Pope and the whole Church 
against him. 

He sent respectful messengers to the Pope, to represent 
his innocence (except in having uttered the hasty words); 
and he swore solemnly and publicly to his innocence, and 
contrived in time to make his peace. As to the four 
guilty Knights, who fled into Yorkshire, and never again 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND, 91 

dared to show themselves at Court, the Pope excommu- 
nicated them ; and they lived miserably for some time, 
shunned by all their countrymen. At last, they went 
humbly to Jerusalem as a penance, and there died and 
were buried. 

It happened, fortunately for the pacifying of the Pope, 
that an opportunity arose very soon after the murder of 
a Becket, for the king to declare his power in Ireland — 
which was an acceptable undertaking to the Pope, as the 
Irish, who had been converted to Christianity by one 
Patricius (otherwise St. Patrick) long ago, before any 
Pope existed, considered that the Pope had nothing at 
all to do with them, or they with the Pope, and accord- 
ingly refused to pay him Peter's Pence, or that tax of a 
penny a house which I have elsewhere mentioned. The 
King's opportunity arose in this way. 

The Irish were at that time, as barbarous a people as 
you can well imagine. They were continually quarrelling 
and fighting, cutting one another's throats, slicing one 
another's noses, burning one another's houses, carrying 
away one another's wives, and committing all sorts of 
violence. The country was divided into five kingdoms — 
Desmond, Thomond, Connaught, Ulster, and Leinster 
— each governed by a separate King, of whom one claimed 
to be the chief of the rest. Now, one of these Kings, 
named Dermond Mac Murrough (a wild kind of name, 
spelt in more than one wild kind of way), had carried off 
the wife of a friend of his, and concealed heron an island 
in a bog. The friend resenting this (though it was quite 
the custom of the- country), complained to the chief King, 
and, with the chief King's help, drove Dermond Mac 
Murrough out of his dominions. Dermond came over to 
England for revenge ; and offered to hold his realm as a 
vassal of King Henry, if King Henry would help him to 
regain it. The King consented to these terms ; but only 
assisted him, then, with what were called Letters Patent, 
authorizing any English subjects who were so disposed, 
to enter into his service, and aid his cause. 

There was, at Bristol, a certain Earl Richard de 
Clare, called Strongbow ; of no very good character ; 
needy and desperate, and ready for anything that offered 
him a chance of improving his fortunes. There were, 
in South Wales, two other broken knights of the same 



92 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

good-for-nothing sort, called Robert Fitz Stephen, and 
Maurice Fitz Gerald. These three, each with a small 
band of followers, took up Dermond's cause; and it was 
agreed that if it proved successful, Strongbow should 
marry Dermond's daughter Eva, and be declared his heir. 

The trained English followers of these knights were so 
superior in all the discipline of battle to the Irish, that 
they beat them against immense superiority of numbers. 
In one fight, early in the war, they cut off three hundred 
heads, and laid them before MacMurrough ; who turned 
them every one up with his hands, rejoicing, and, coming 
to one which was the head of a man whom he had much 
disliked, grasped it by the hair and ears, and tore of the 
nose and lips with his teeth. You may judge from this, 
what kind of gentleman an Irish King in those times 
was. The captives, all through this war, were horribly 
treated; the victorious party making nothing of breaking 
their limbs, and casting them into the sea from the tops 
of high rocks. It was in the midst of the miseries and 
cruelties attendant on the taking of Waterford, where 
the dead lay piled in the streets, and the filthy gutters 
ran with blood that Strongbow married Eva. An odious 
marriage company, those mounds of corpses must have 
made, I think, and one quite worthy of the young lady's 
father. 

He died, after Waterford and Dublin had been taken, 
and various successes achieved; and Strongbow became 
King of Leinster. Now came King Henry's opportunity. 
To restrain the growing power of Strongbow, he himself 
repaired to Dublin, as Strongbow's Royal Master, and 
deprived him of his kingdom, but confirmed him in the 
enjoyment of great possessions. The King, then holding 
state in Dublin, received the homage of nearly all the Irish 
Kings and Chiefs, and so came home again with a great 
addition to his reputation, as Lord of Ireland, and with 
a new claim on the favor of the Pope. And now, their 
reconciliation was completed — more easily and mildly by 
the Pope, than the King might have expected. I think. 

At this period of his reign, when his troubles seemed 
Go few, and his prospects so bright, those domestic 
miseries began which gradually made the king the most 
unhappy of men, reduced his great spirit, wore away his 
health, and broke his heart. 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 03 

He had four sons. Henry, now aged eighteen— his 
secret crowning of whom had given such offence to 
Thomas a Beeket; Richard, aged sixteen ; Geoffrey, 
fifteen; and John his favorite, a young boy whom the 
courtiers named Lackland, because he had no inherit- 
ance, but to whom the King meant to give the Lordship 
of Ireland. All these misguided boys, in theirturn, were 
unnatural sons to him, and unnatural brothers to each 
other. Prince Henry, stimulated by the French King, 
and by his bad mother, Queen Eleanor, began the unduti- 
i'ul history. 

First, he demanded that his young wife, Margaret, the 
French King's daughter, should be crowned as well as he. 
His father, the King, consented, and it was done. Jt 
was no sooner done, than he demanded to have a part of 
his father's dominions, during his father's life. This 
being refused, he made off from his father in the night, 
with his bad heart full of bitterness, and took refuge at 
the French King's Court. Within a day or two, his 
brothers Richard and Geoffrey followed. Their mother 
tried to join them — escaping in men's clothes— but she 
was seized by King Henry's men and immured in prison, 
where she lay, deservedly, for sixteen years. Every day, 
however, some grasping English nobleman, to whom the 
King's protection of his people from their avarice and 
oppression had given offence, deserted him and joined 
the Princes. Every day, he heard some fresh intelligence 
of the Princes levying armies against him ; of Prince 
Henry's wearing a crown before his own ambassadors at 
the French Court, and being called the Junior King of 
England ; of all the Princes swearing never to makepeace 
with him their father, without the consent and approval 
of the Barons of France. But with his fortitude and 
energy unshaken, King Henry met the shock of these 
disasters with a resolved and cheerful face. He called 
upon all Royal fathers, who had sons, to help him, 
for his cause was theirs; he hired, out of his riches, 
twenty thousand men to fight the false French King, 
who stirred his own blood against him ; and he carried on 
the war with such vigor, that Louis soon proposed a con- 
ference to treat for peace. 

The conference was held beneath an old wide-spread- 
ing green elm-tree, upon a plain in France. It led to 



94 A CHILD'S HISTOBY OF ENGBAND. 

nothing. The war recommenced. Prince Richard began 
his fighting career, by leading an army against his father; 
but his father beat him and his army back : and thousands 
of his men would have rued the day in which they fought 
in such a wicked cause, had not the King received news 
of an invasion of England by the Scots, and promptly 
came home through a great storm to repress it. And 
whether he really began to fear that he suffered these 
troubles because aBecket had been murdered ; or whether 
he wished to rise in the favor of the Pope, who had now 
declared a Becket to be a saint, or in the favor of his own 
people, of whom many believed that even a Becket's 
senseless tomb could work miracles, I don't know : but 
the King no sooner landed in England than he went 
straight to Canterbury ; and when he came within sight 
of the distant Cathedral, he dismounted from his horse, 
took off his shoes, and walked with bare and bleeding 
feet to a Becket's grave. There, he lay down on the 
ground, lamenting, in the presence of many people ; and 
by and by he went into the Chapter House, and, remov- 
ing his clothes from his back and shoulders, submitted 
himself to be beaten with knotted cords (not beaten very 
hard, I dare say though) by eighty Priests, one after 
another. It chanced that on the very day when the King 
made this curious exhibition of himself, a complete 
victory was obtained over the Scots ; which very much 
delighted the Priests, who said that it was won because 
of his great example of repentance. For the Priests in 
general had found out, since a Becket's death, that they 
admired him of all things — though they had hated him 
very cordially when he was alive. 

The Earl of Flanders, who was at the head of the base 
conspiracy of the King's undutifulsons, and their foreign 
friends, took the opportunity of the King being thus 
employed at home, to lay siege to Rouen, the capital of 
Normandy. But the King, who was extraordinarily 
quick and active in all his movements, was at Rouen, too, 
before it was supposed possible that he could have left 
England ; and there he so defeated the said Earl of Flanders, 
that the conspirators proposed peace, and his bad sons 
Henry and Geoffrey submitted. Richard resisted for six 
weeks ; but, being beaten out of castle after castle, he at 
last submitted too, and his father forgave him,. 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 95 

To forgive these unworthy princes was only to afford 
them breathing-time for new faithlessness. They were 
so false, disloyal, and dishonorable, that they were ao 
more to be trusted than common thieves. In the very 
next year, Prince Henry rebelled again, and was again 
forgiven. In eight years more, Prince Richard rebelled 
against his elder brother ; and Prince Geoffrey infamously 
said that the brothers could never agree well together, 
unless they were united against their father. In the very 
next year after their reconciliation by the King, Prince 
Henry again rebelled against his father ; and again sub- 
mitted, swearing to be true ; and was again forgiven; and 
again rebelled with Geoffrey. 

But the end of this perfidious Prince was come. He 
fell sick at a French town ; and his conscience terribly re- 
proaching him with his baseness, he sent messengers to 
the King his father, imploring him to come and see him, 
and to forgive him for the last time on his bed of death. 
The generous King, who had a royal and forgiving mind 
towards his children always, would have gone ; but this 
Prince had been so unnatural, that the noblemen about 
the King suspected treachery, and represented to him 
that he could not safely trust his life with such a traitor, 
though his own eldest son. Therefore the King sent him 
a ring from off his finger as a token of forgiveness ; and 
when the Prince had kissed it, with much grief and many 
tears, and had confessed to those around him how bad, 
and wicked, and undutiful a son he had been ; he said to 
the attendant Priests : " O, tie a rope about my body, 
and draw me out of bed, and lay me down upon a bed of 
ashes, that I may die with prayers to God in a repentant 
manner ! " And so he died, at twenty-seven years old. 

Three years afterwards, Prince Geoffrey, being un- 
horsed at a tournament, had his brains trampled out by 
a crowd of horses passing over him. So, there only re- 
mained Prince Richard, and Prince John — who had grown 
to be a young man, now, and had solemnly sworn to be 
faithful to his father. Richard soon rebelled again, en- 
couraged by his friend the French King, Philip the 
Second (son of Louis, who was dead) ; and soon sub* 
mitted ( and was again forgiven, swearing on the New 
Testament never to rebel again ; and, in another year or 
§o, rebelled again 5 and, in the -presence of h\§ fathf^ 



96 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

knelt down on his knee before the King of France j. and 
did the French King homage; and declared that with his 
aid he would possess himself, by force, of all his father's 
French dominions. 

And yet tins Richard called himself a soldier of our 
Saviour! And yet this Richard wore the Cross, which 
the Kings of France and England had both taken, in the 
previous year, at a brotherly meeting underneath the 
old wide-spreading elm-tree on the plain, when they had 
sworn (like him) to devote themselves to a new Crusade, 
for the love and honor of the Truth ! 

Sick at heart, wearied out by the falsehood of his sons, 
and almost ready to lie down and die, the unhappy King 
who had so long stood firm began to fail. But the Pope, 
to his honor, supported him; and obliged the French 
King and Richard, though successful in tight, to treat for 
peace. Richard wanted to be crowned King of England, 
and pretended that he wanted to be married (which he 
really did not) to the French King's sister, his promised 
wife, whom King Henry detained in England. King 
Henry wanted, on the other hand, that the French King's 
sister should be married to his favorite son John : the 
only one of his sons (he said) who had never rebelled 
against him. At last King Henry, deserted by his nobles 
one by one, distressed, exhausted, broken-hearted, con- 
sented to establish peace. 

One final heavy sorrow was reserved for him, even 
yet. When they brought him the proposed treaty of 
peace, in writing, as he lay very ill in bed, they brought 
him also the list of the deserters from their allegiance, 
whom he was required to pardon. The first name upon 
this list was John, his favorite son, in whom he had 
trusted to the last. 

" O John ! child of my heart ! " exclaimed the King in 
a great agony of mind. "O John, whom I have loved 
the best! O John, for whom I have contended through 
these many troubles ! Have you betrayed me too ! " 
And then he lay down with a heavy groan, and said, 
"Now let the world go as it will. I care for nothing 
more ! " 

After a time, he told his attendants to take him to the 
French town of Chinon — a town he had been fond of, 
ctaing many years* £ut he was fond of no place now| 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 97 

it was too true that be could care for nothing more upon 
this earth. He wildly cursed the hour when he was born, 
and cursed the children whom he left behind him; and 
expired. 

As, one hundred years before, the servile followers of 
the Court had abandoned the Conqueror in the hour of 
his death, so they now abandoned his descendant. The 
very body was stripped, in the plunder of the Royal 
chamber; and it was not easy to find the means of carry- 
ing it for burial to the abbey church of Fontevraud. 

Richard was said in after years, by way of flattery, to 
have the heart of a Lion. It would have been far better, 
I think, to have had the heart of a Man. His heart, what- 
ever it was, had cause to beat remorsefully within his 
breast, when he came — as he did — into the solemn abbey, 
and looked on his dead father's uncovered face. His 
heart, whatever it was, had been a black and perjured 
heart, in all his dealings with the deceased King, and 
more deficient in a single touch of tenderness than any 
wild beast's in the forest. 

There is a pretty story told of this Reign, called the 
story of Fair Rosamond. It relates how the King doted 
on Fair Rosamond, who was the loveliest girl in all the 
world ; and how he had a beautiful Bower built for her 
in a Park at Woodstock; and how it was erected in a 
labyrinth, and couid only be found by a clew of silk. 
How the bad Queen Eleanor, becoming jealous of Fair 
Rosamond, found out the secret of the clew, and appeared 
before her, one day, with a dagger and a cup of poison, 
ami left her to the choice between those deaths. How 
Fair Rosamond, after shedding many piteous tears and 
offering many useless prayers to the cruel Queen, took 
the poison, and fell dead in the midst of the beautiful 
bower, while the unconscious birds sanggayly all around 
her. 

Now, there was a Fair Rosamond, and she was (T dare 
say) the loveliest girl in all the world, and the King was 
certainly very fond of her, and the bad Queen Eleanor was 
certainly made jealous. But I am afraid— I say afraid, 
because I like the story so much — that there was no 
bower, no labyrinth, no silken clew, no dagger, no poison. 
I am afraid Fair Rosamond retired to a nunnery near 



98 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

Oxford, and died there, peaceably ; her sister-nuns hang- 
ing a silken drapery over her tomb, and often dressing 
it with flowers, in remembrance of the youth and beauty 
that had enchanted the King when he too was young, 
and when his life lay fair before him. 

It was dark and ended now ; faded and gone., Henry 
Plantagenet lay quiet in the abbey church of Fontevraud, 
in the fifty-seventh year of his age — never to be completed 
— after governing England well, for nearly thirty-five 
years. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

ENGLAND UNDER RICHARD THE FIRST, CALLED THE LION- 
HEART. 

In the year of our Lord one thousand one hundred and 
eighty-nine, Richard of the Lion Heart succeeded to the 
throne of King Henry the Second, whose paternal heart 
he had done so much to break. He had been, as we have 
seen, a rebel from his boyhood ; but, the moment he be- 
came a King against whom others might rebel, he found 
out that rebellion was a great wickedness. In the heat 
of this pious discovery, he punished all the leading people 
who had befriended him against his father. He could 
scarcely have done anything that would have been a 
better instance of his real nature, or a better warning 
to fawners and parasites not to trust in lion-hearted 
princes. 

He likewise put his lafce father's treasurer in chains, 
and locked him up in a dungeon from which he was not 
set free until he had relinquished, not only all the Crown 
treasure, but all his own money too. So, Richard cer- 
tainly got the Lion's share of the wealth of this wretched 
treasurer, whether he had a Lion's heart or not. 

He was crowned King of England, with great pomp, at 
Westminster : walking to the Cathedral under a silken 
canopy stretched on the tops of four lances, each carried 
by a great lord. On the day of his coronation, a dreadful 
murdering of the Jews took place, which seems to have 
given great delight to numbers of savage persons calling 
themselves Christians. The King had issued a proclama- 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND* 99 

tion forbidding the Jews (who were generally hated, 
though they were the most useful merchants in England) 
to appear at the ceremony ; but as they had assembled in 
London from all parts, bringing presents to show their 
respect for the new Sovereign, some of them ventured 
down to Westminster Hall with their gifts ; which were 
very readily accepted. It is supposed, now, that some 
noisy fellow in the crowd, pretending to be a very deli-, 
cate Christian, set up a howl at this, and struck a Jew 
who was trying to get in at the Hall door with his 
present. A riot arose. The Jews who had got into the 
Hall, were driven forth ; and some of the rabble cried 
out that the new King had commanded the unbelieving 
race to be put to death. Thereupon the crowd rushed 
through the narrow streets of the city, slaughtering all 
the Jews they met ; and when they could find no more 
out of doors (on account of their having fled to their 
houses, and fastened themselves in), they ran madly 
about, breaking open all the houses where the Jews lived, 
rushing in and stabbing or spearing them, sometimes 
even flinging old people and children out of window into 
blazing fires they had lighted up below. This great 
cruelty lasted four and twenty hours, and only three men 
were punished for it. Even they forfeited their lives not 
for murdering and robbing the Jews, but for burning the 
houses of some Christians. 

King Richard, who was a strong, restless, burly man, 
with" one idea always in his head, and that the very 
troublesome idea of breaking the heads of other men, was 
mightily impatient to go on a Crusade to the Holy Land, 
with a great army. As great armies could not be raised to 
go, even to the Holy Land, without a great deal of money, 
he sold the Crown domains, and even the high offices of 
State ; recklessly appointing noblemen to rule over his 
English subjects, not because they were fit to govern, but 
because they could pay high for the privilege. In this way, 
and by selling pardons at a dear rate, and by varieties of 
avarice and oppression, he scraped together a large 
treasure. He then appointed two bishops to take care of 
his kingdom in his absence, and gave great powers and 
possessions to his brother John, to secure his friendship. 
John would rather have been made Regent of England ; 
but he was a sly man, and friendly to the expedition ; say- 



100 A CHILD'S HISTOBY OF ENGLAND* 

ing to himself, no doubt, "The more fighting, the more 
chance of my brother being killed; and when he Skilled, 
then I become King John! " 

Before the newly levied army departed from England, 
the recruits and the general populace distinguished them- 
selves by astonishing' cruelties on the unfortunate Jews : 
whom, in many large towns, they murdered by hundreds 
in the most horrible manner. 

At York, a large body of Jews took refuge in the Castle, 
in the absence of its Governor, after the wives and chil- 
dren of many of them had been slain before their eyes. 
Presently came the Governor and demanded admission. 
"How can we give it thee, O Governor! " said the Jews 
upon the walls, " when, if we open the gate by so much as 
the width of a foot, the roaring crowd behind thee will 
press in and kill us!" 

Upon this, the unjust Governor became angry, and told 
the people that he approved of their killing those Jews; 
and a mischievous maniac of a friar, dressed all in white 9 
put himself at the head of the assault, and they assaulted 
the Castle for three days. 

Then, said Jocen, the head Jew (who was a Rabbi or 
Priest), to the rest, "Brethren, there is no hope for us 
with the Christians who are hammering at the gates and 
walls, and who must soon break in. As we and our wives 
and children must die, either by Christian hands, or by 
our own, let it be by our own. Let us destroy by fire 
what jewels and other treasure we have here, then fire the 
castle, and then perish ! " 

A few could not resolve to do this, but the greater part 
complied. They made a blazing heap of all their valu- 
ables, and, when those were consumed, set the castle in 
flames. While the flames roared and crackled around 
them, and, shooting up into the sky, turned it b,lood-red, 
Jocen cut the throat of his beloved wife, and stabbed 
himself. All the others who had wives or children, did 
the like dreadful deed. When the populace broke in, 
they found (except the trembling few, cowering in corners, 
whom they soon killed) only he;> ps of greasy cinders, with 
here and there something like part of the blackened trunk 
of a burnt tree, but which had lately been a. human 
creature, formed by the beneficent hand of the Creator as 
they were. 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 101 

After this bad beginning, Richard and his troops went 
On, in no very good manner, with the Holy Crusade. It 
was undertaken jointly by the King of England and his 
old friend Philip of France. They commenced the busi- 
ness by reviewing their forces, to the number of one 
hundred thousand men. Afterwards, they severally em- 
barked their troops for Messina, in Sicily, which was 
appointed as the next place of meeting. 

King Richard's sister had married the King of this 
place, but he was dead; and his uncle Tancked had 
usurped the crown, cast the Royal Widow into prison, 
and possessed himself of her estates. Richard fiercely 
demanded his sister's release, the restoration of her lands, 
and (according to the Royal custom of the Island) that 
she should have a golden chair, a golden table, four and 
twenty silver cups and four and twenty silver dishes. 
As he was too powerful to be successfully resisted, Tan- 
cred yielded to his demands ; and then the French King 
grew jealous, and complained that the English King 
wanted to be absolute in the Island of Messina and every- 
where else. Richard, however, cared little or nothing for 
this complaint, and in consideration of a present of twenty 
thousand pieces of gold, promised his pretty little nephew 
Arthur, then a child of two years old, in marriage to 
Tancred's daughter. We shall hear again of pretty little 
Arthur by and by. 

This Sicilian affair arranged without anybody's brains 
being knocked out (which must have rather disappointed 
him), King Richard took his sister away, and also a fair 
lady named Berengaria, with whom he had fallen in 
love in France, and whom his mother, Queen Eleanor (so 
lone: in prison, you remember, but released by Richard 
on his coming to the Throne), had brought out there to 
be his wife; and sailed with them for Cyprus. 

He soon had the pleasure of fighting the King of the 
Island of Cyprus, for allowing his subjects to pillage 
some of the English troop* .ho were shipwrecked on the 
shore; and easily conquering this poor monarch, he seized 
his only daughter, to be a companion to the lady Beren- 
garia, and put the King himself into silver fetters. He 
then sailed away again witii his mother, sister, wife, and 
the captive princess; and soon arrived before the town 
of Acre, which the French King with his fleet was besieg- 



102 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

ing from the sea. But the French King was in no 
triumphant condition, for his army had been thinned by 
the swords of the Saracens, and wasted by the plague; 
and Saladin, the brave Sultan of the Turks, at the head 
of a numerous army, was at that time gallantly defending 
the place from the hills that rise above it. 

Wherever the united army of Crusaders went, they 
agreed in few points except in gaming, drinking, and 
quarrelling, in a most unholy manner ; in debauching the 
people among whom they tarried, whether they were 
friends or foes ; and in carrying disturbance and ruin 
into quiet places. The French King was jealous of the 
English King, and the English King was jealous of the 
French King, and the disorderly and violent soldiers 
of the two nations were jealous of one another; con- 
sequently, the two Kings could not at first agree, even 
upon a joint assault on Acre; but when they did make 
up their quarrel for that purpose, the Saracens promised 
to yield the town, to give up to the Christians the wood 
of the Holy Cross, to set at liberty all their Christian 
captives, and to pay two hundred thousand pieces of 
gold. All this was to be done within forty days ; but, 
not being done, King Richard ordered some three thou- 
sand Saracen prisoners to be brought out in the front of 
his camp, and there, in full view of their own country- 
men, to be butchered. 

The French King had no part in this crime ; for he was 
by that time travelling homeward with the greater part 
of his men ; being offended by the overbearing conduct 
of the English King ; being anxious to look after his own 
dominions ; and being ill, besides, from the unwholesome 
air of that hot and sandy country. King Richard carried 
on the war without him ; and remained in the East, meet- 
ing with a variety of adventures, nearly a year and a 
half. Every night when his army was on the march, 
and came to a halt, the heralds cried out three times, to 
remind all the soldiers of the cause in which they were 
engaged, " Save the Holy Sepulchre ! " and then all the sol- 
diers knelt, and said" Amen ! " Marching or encamping, 
the army had continually to strive with the hot air of the 
glaring desert, or with the Saracen soldiers animated and 
directed by the brave Saladin, or with both together. 
Sickness and death, battle and wounds, were always 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 103 

among them ; but through every difficulty King Richard 

fought like a giant, and worked like a common laborer. 

Long and long after he was quiet in his grave, his terrible 

battle-axe, with twenty English pounds of English steel 

j in its mighty head, was a legend among the Saracens ; 

I and when all the Saracen and Christian hosts had been 

' dust for many a year, if a Saracen horse started at any 

object by the wayside, his rider would exclaim, " What 

dost thou fear, Fool ? Dost thou think King Richard is 

behind it?" 

No one admired this~King's renown for bravery more 
than Saladin himself, who was a generous and gallant 
enemy. When Richard lay ill of a fever, Saladin sent 
him fresh fruits from Damascus, and snow from the 
mountain-tops. Courtly messages and compliments were 
frequently exchanged between them—and then King 
Richard would mount his horse and kill as many Saracens 
as he could ; and Saladin would mount his, and kill as 
many Christians as he could. In this way King Richard 
fought to his heart's content at Arsoof and at Jaffa; and 
finding himself with nothing exciting to do at Ascalon, 
except to rebuild, for his own defence, some fortifications 
there which the Saracens had destroyed, he kicked his 
ally the Duke of Austria, for being too proud to work at 
them. 

The army at last came within sight of the Holy City 
of Jerusalem ; but, being then a mere nest of jealousy, 
and quarrelling and righting, soon retired, and agreed 
with the Saracens upon a truce for three years, three 
months, three days, and three hours. Then, the English 
Christians, protected by the noble Saladin from Saracen 
revenge, visited Our Saviour's tomb; and then King 
Richard embarked with a small force at Acre to return 
home. 

But he was shipwrecked in the Adriatic Sea, and was 
fain to pass through Germany, under an assumed name. 
Now, there were many people in Germany who had 
served in the Holy Land under that proud Duke of 
Austria who had been kicked ; and some of them, easily 
recognizing a man so remarkable as King Richard, car- 
ried their intelligence to the kicked Duke, who straight- 
way took him prisoner at a little inn near Vienna. 

The Duke's master the Emperor of Germany, and the 



104 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND, 

King of France, were equally delighted to have so trouble- 
some a monarch in safe keeping*. Friendships which are 
founded on a partnership in doing wrong, are never true: 
and the King of France was now quite as heartily King 
Richard's foe, as he had ever been his friend in his un- 
natural conduct to his father. He monstrously pre- 
tended that King Richard had designed to poison him in 
the East; he charged him with having murdered, there, 
a man whom he had in truth befriended; he brihed the 
Emperor of Germany to keep him close prisoner; and, 
finally, through the plotting of these two princes, Richard 
was brought before the German legislature, charged with 
the foregoing crimes, and many others. But he defended 
himself so well, that many of the assembly were moved 
to tears by his eloquence and earnestness. It was de- 
cided that he should be treated, during the rest of his 
captivity, in a manner more becoming his dignity than 
he had been, and that he should be set free on the pay- 
ment of a heavy ransom. This ransom the English people 
willingly raised. When Queen Eleanor took it over to 
Germany, it was at first evaded and refused. But she 
appealed to the honor of the princes of all the German 
Empire in behalf of her son, and appealed so well that it 
was accepted, and the Kins: released. Thereupon, the 
King of France wrote to Prince John — "Take care of 
thyself. The devil is unchained!" 

Prince John had reason to fear his brother, for lie had 
been a traitor to him in his captivity. He had secretly 
joined the French Kino;; had vowed to the English nobles 
and people that his brother was dead; and had vainly 
tried to seize the crown. He was now in France, at a 
place called Evreux. Being the meanest and basest of 
men, he contrived a mean and base expedient for mak- 
ing himself acceptable to his brother. He invited the 
French officers of the garrison in that town to dinner* 
murdered them all. and then took the fortress. With 
this recommendation to the good will of a lion-hearted 
monarch, he hastened to King Richard, fell on his 
knees before him, and obtained the intercession of Queen 
Eleanor. "I foririve him," said the King, "and I hope I 
may forget the injury he has done me, as easily as I know 
he will forget my pardon." 

While King Richard was in Sicily, there had been 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 105 

trouble in his dominions at home: one of the bishops 
whom lie had left in charge thereof, arresting the other ; 
and making, in bis pride and ambition, as great a show- 
as if he were King himself. But the King heating of it 
at Messina, and appointing a new Regency, this" Long- 
champ (for that was his lrune) had fled to France in a 
woman's dress, and had there been encouraged and sup- 
ported by the French King. With all these causes of 
offence against Philip in his mind, King Richard had no 
sooner been welcomed home by his enthusiastic suhjects 
with great display and splendor, and had no sooner been 
crowned afresh at Winchester, than he resolved to show 
the French King that the Devil was unchained indeed, 
and made war against him with great fury. 

There was fresh trouble at home about this time, aris- 
ing out of the discontents of the poor people, who com- 
plained that they were far more heavily taxed than the 
rich, and who found a spirited champion in William 
Fitz Osbert, called Longbeard. He became the leader 
of a secret society, comprising fifty thousand men; he 
was seized by surprise; he stabbed the citizen who 
first laid hands upon him ; and retreated, bravely 
fighting, to a church, which he maintained four days, un- 
til he was dislodged by fire, and run through the body as 
he came out. He was not killed, though ; for he was 
dragged, half dead, at the tail of a horse to Smithfield, 
and there hanged. Death was long a favorite remedy for 
silencing the people's advocates; but as we goon with 
this history, I fancy we shall find them difficult to make 
an end of, for all that. 

The French war, delayed occasionally by a truce, was 
still in progress when a certain Lord named Vidomar, 
Viscount of Limoges, chanced to find in his ground a 
treasure of ancient coins. As the King's vassal, he sent 
the King half of it; but the King claimed the whole. 
The lord refused to yield the whole. The King besieged 
the lord in his castle, swore that he would take the cas- 
tle by storm, and hang every man of its defenders on the 
battlements. 

There was a strange old song in that part of the conn- 
try, to the effect that in Limoges an arrow would be made 
by which King Richard would die. It may be that 
Bertrand kb Gourdon, a young man who was one of the 



106 A CHILD'S HISTOBY OF ENGLAND. 

defenders of the castle, had often sung it or heard it 
sung of a winter night, and remembered it when he saw, 
from his post upon the ramparts, the King attended only 
by his chief officer riding below the walls surveying the 
place. He drew an arrow to the head, took steady aim, 
said between his teeth, " Now I pray God speed thee well, 
arrow ! " discharged it, and struck the King in the left 
shoulder. 

Although the wound was not at first considered dan- 
gerous, it was severe enough to cause the King to retire 
to his tent, and direct the assault to be made without 
him. The castle was taken, and every man of its de- 
fenders was hanged, as the King had sworn all should be, 
except Bertrand de Gourdon, who was reserved until the 
royal pleasure respecting him should be known. 

By that time unskilful treatment had made the wound 
mortal, and the King knew that he was dying. He di- 
rected Bertrand to be brought into his tent. The young 
man was brought there, heavily chained. King Richard 
looked at him steadily. He looked, as steadily, at the 
King. 

"Knave ! " said King Richard. " What have I done to 
thee that thou shouldest take my life ? " 

"What hast thou done to me?" replied the young 
man. "With thine own hands thou hast killed my 
father and my two brothers. Myself thou wouldest have 
hanged. Let me die now, by any torture that thou wilt. 
My comfort is, that no torture can save thee. Thou too 
must die; and through me, the world is quit of thee ! " 

Again the King looked at the young man steadily. 
Again the young man looked steadily at him. Perhaps 
some remembrance of his generous enemy Saladin, who 
was not a Christian, came into the mind of the dying 
King. 

" Youth ! " he said, " I forgive thee. Go unhurt ! " 

Then, turning to the chief officer who had been riding 
in his company when he received the wound, King 
Richard said : 

" Take off his chains, give him a hundred shillings, and 
let him depart." 

He sunk down on his couch, and a dark mist seemed 
in his weakened eyes to fill the tent wherein he had so 
often rested, and he died. His age was forty-two ; Jie 



A CHILD' S HISTOBY OF ENGLAND. 107 

had reigned ten years. His last command was not 
obeyed ; for the chief officer flayed Bertrand de Gourdon 
alive, and hanged him. 

There is an old tune yet known — a sorrowful air will 
sometimes outlive many generations of strong men, and 
even last longer than battle-axes with twenty pounds of 
steel in the head — by which this King is said to have been 
discovered in his captivity. Blondel, a favorite Minstrel 
of King Richard, as the story relates, faithfully seeking 
his Royal. master, went singing it outside the gloomy 
walls of many foreign fortresses and prisons; until at 
last he heard it echoed from within a dungeon, and knew 
the voice, and cried out in ecstasy, " O Richard, O my 
King ! " You ma\ believe it, if you like ; it would be 
easy to believe worse things. Richard was himself a 
Minstrel and a Poet. If he had not been a Prince too, he 
might have been a better man perhaps, and might have 
gone out of the world with less bloodshed and waste of 
life to answer for. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

ENGLAND UNDER KING JOHN, CALLED LACKLAND, 

At two and thirty years of age John became King of 
England. His pretty little nephew Arthur had the best 
claim to the throne ; but John seized the treasure, and 
made fine promises to the nobility, and got himself 
crowned at Westminster within a few weeks after his 
brother Richard's death. I doubt whether the crown 
could possibly have been put upon the head of a meaner 
coward, or a more detestable villain, if England had been 
searched from end to end to find him out. 

The French King, Philip, refused to acknowlege the 
right of John to his new dignity, and declared in favor 
of Arthur. You must not suppose that he had any 
generosity of feeling for the fatherless boy; it merely 
suited his ambitious schemes to oppose the King of Eng- 
land. So John and the French King went to war about 
Arthur. 

He-was a handsome boy, at that time only twelve 



108 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

years old. He was not born when his father, Geoffrey, had 
his brains trampled out at the tournament; and, besides 
the misfortune of never having known a father's guidance 
and protection, he had the additional misfortune to have 
a foolish mother (Constance by name), lately married to 
her third husband. She took Arthur, upon John's ac- 
cession, to the French King, who pretended to be very 
much his friend, and who made him a Knight, and 
promised him his daughter in marriage; but, who cared 
so little about him in reality, that finding it to his inter- 
est to make peace with King John for a time, he did so 
without the least consideration for the poor little Prince, 
and heartlessly sacrificed all his interests. 

Young Arthur, for two years afterwards, lived quietly; 
and in the course of that time his mother died. But the 
French King then finding it his interest to quarrel with 
King John again, again made Arthur his pretence, and 
invited the orphan boy to court. "You know your 
rights, Prince," said the French King, "and you would 
like to be a King. Is it not so?" — "Truly," said Prince 
Arthur, " I should greatly like to be a King." — "Then," 
said Philip, "you shall have two hundred gentlemen 
who are Knights of mine, and with them you shall go 
to win back the provinces belonging to you, of which 
your uncle, the usurping King of England, has taken 
possession. I myself, meanwhile, will head a force 
against him in Normandy." Poor Arthur was s.o flat- 
tered and so grateful that he signed a treaty with the 
crafty French King, agreeing to consider him his su- 
perior Lord, and that the French King should keep for 
himself whatever he could take from King John. 

Now, King John was so bad in all ways, and King 
Philip was so perfidious, that Arthur, between the two, 
might as well have been a lamb between a fox and a wolf. 
But, being so young, he was ardent and flushed with 
hope; and, when the people of Brittany (which was his 
inheritance) sent him five hundred more knights and five 
thousand foot-soldiers, he believed his fortune was made. 
The people of Brittany had been fond of him from his 
birth, and had requested that he might be called Aithur, 
in remembrance of that dimly famous English Arthur, 
of whom Ttold you early iu this book, whom they believed 
to have been the brave friend and companion of an old, 



A CHILD'S BISTORT OF ENGLAND. 109 

King of their own. They had tales among them about 
a prophet called Meelin (of the same old time), who had 
foretold that their own King should be restored to them 
after hundreds of years; and they believed that the pro- 
phecy would be fulfilled in Arthur; that the time would 
come when he would rule them with a crown of Brittany 
upon his head, and when neither King of France nor 
King of England would have any power over them. 
When Arthur found himself riding in a glittering suit of 
armor on a richly caparisoned horse, at the head of his 
train of knights and soldiers, he began to believe this 
too, and to consider old Merlin a very superior prophet. 

lie did not know — how could he, being so innocent and 
inexperienced?— that his little army was a mere nothing 
against the power of the King of England. The French 
King knew it ; but the poor i>oy's fate was little to him, 
so that the King of England was worried and distressed. 
Therefore, King Philip went his way into Normandy, 
and Prince Arthur went his way towards Mirebeau, a 
French town near Poitiers, both very well pleased. 

Prince Arthur went to attack the town of Mirebeau be- 
cause his grandmother Eleanor, who has so often made 
her appearance in this history (and who had always been 
his mother's enemy), was living there, and because his 
Knights said, "Prince, if you can take her prisoner, you 
will be able to bring the King your uncle to terms!" 
But she was not to be easily taken. She was old enough 
by this time— eighty— but she was as full of stratagem 
as she was full of years and wickedness. Receiving in- 
telligence of young Arthur's approach, she shut herself 
up in a high tower, and encouraged her soldiers to defend 
it like men. Prince Arthur with his little army besieged 
the high tower. King John, hearing how matters stood, 
came up to the rescue, with his army. So here was a 
strange* family-party ! The boy Prince besieging his 
.grandmother, and his uncle besieging him ! 

This position of affairs did not last long. One summer 
night King John, by treachery, got Ins men into the town, 
surprised Prince Arthur's force, took two hundred of his 
Knights, and seized the Prince himself in his bed. The 
Knights were put in heavy irons, and driven away in 
open carts drawn by bullocks, to various dungeons, where 
they were most inhumanly treated, and where some of 



110 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

them were starved to death. Prince Arthur was sent to 
the castle of Falaise. 

One day, while he was in prison at that castle, mourn- 
fully thinking it strange that one so young should be in 
so much trouble, and looking out of the small window in 
the deep dark wall, at the summer sky and the birds, the 
door was softly opened, and he saw his uncle the King 
standing in the shadow of the archway looking very 
grim. 

"Arthur," said the King, with his wicked eyes more 
on the stone floor than on his nephew, "will you not 
trust to the gentleness, the friendship, and the truthful- 
ness, of your loving uncle? " 

" I will tell my loving uncle that," replied the boy, 
" when he does me right. Let him restore to me my king- 
dom of England, and then come to me and ask the ques- 
tion." 

The King looked at him and went out. " Keep that 
boy close prisoner," said he to the warden of the castle. 

Then, the King took secret counsel with the worst of 
his nobles how the Prince was to be got rid of. Some 
said, "Put out his eyes and keep him in prison, as Robert 
of Normandy was kept." Others said, " Have him 
stabbed." Others, " Have him hanged." Others, "Have 
him poisoned." 

King John, feeling that in any case, whatever was done 
afterwards, it would be a satisfaction to his mind to have 
those handsome eyes burnt out that had looked at him 
so proudly while his own royal eyes were blinking at 
the stone floor, sent certain ruffians to Falaise to blind 
the boy with red-hot irons. But Arthur so pathetically 
entreated them, and shed such piteous tears,.and so ap- 
pealed to Hubert de Bourg, the warden of the castle, 
who had a love for him, and was an honorable tender man, 
that Hubert could not bear it. To his eternal honor he 
prevented the torture from being performed, and, at his 
own risk, sent the savages away. 

The chafed and disappointed King bethought him- 
self of the stabbing suggestion next, and, with his shuf- 
fling manner and his cruel face, proposed it to one William 
de Bray. " I am a gentleman and not an executioner," 
said William de Bray, and left the presence with disdain. 

{tat it was not difficult for a King to hire a mur- 






A CHILD'S HISTOBY OF ENGLAND. Ill 

derer in those days. King John found one for his money, 
and sent him down to the castle of Falaise. " On what 
errand dost thou come ? " said Hubert to this fellow. 
" To despatch young Arthur," he returned. " Go back to 
him who sent thee," answered Hubert, " and say that I 
will do it!" 

King John very well knowing that Hubert would never 
do it, but that he courageously sent this reply to save 
the Prince or gain time, despatched messengers to convey 
the young prisoner to the castle of Rouen. 

Arthur was soon forced from the good Hubert — of whom 
he had never stood in greater need than then — carried 
away by night, and lodged in his new prison : where, 
through his grated window, he could hear the deep waters 
of the river Seine, rippling against the stone wall below. 

One dark night, as he lay sleeping, dreaming perhaps 
of rescue by those unfortunate gentlemen who were ob- 
scurely suffering and dying in his cause, he was roused, 
and bidden by his jailer to come down the staircase to the 
foot of the tower. He hurriedly dressed himself and 
obeyed. When they came to the bottom of the winding 
stairs, and the night air from the river blew upon their 
faces, the jailer trod upon his torch and put it out. 
Then Arthur, in the darkness was hurriedly drawn into 
a solitary boat. And in that boat, he found his uncle 
and one other man. 

He knelt to them, and prayed them not to murder 
him. Deaf to his entreaties, they stabbed him and sunk 
his body in the river with heavy stones. When the 
spring morning broke, the tower door was closed, the 
boat was gone, the river sparkled on its way, and never 
more was any trace of the poor boy beheld by mortal 
eyes. The news of this atrocious murder being spread 
in England, awakened a hatred of the King (already odious 
for his many vices, and for his having stolen away and 
married a noble lady while his own wife was living) that 
never slept again through his whole reign. In Brittany, 
the indignation was intense. Arthur's own sister Elea- 
nor was in the power of John, and shut up in a con- 
vent at Bristol, but his half-sister Alice was in Brit- 
tany. The people chose her, and the murdered prince's 
father-in-law, the last husband of Constance, to represent 
them ; and carried their fiery complaints to King Philip. 



112 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

King Philip, summoned King John (as the holder of ter- 
ritory in France) to come before him and defend himself. 

King John refusing to appear, King Philip declared 
him false, perjured, and guilty; and again made war. 
In a little time, by conquering the greater part of his 
French territory, King Philip deprived him of one third 
of his (ton unions. And, through all the fighting that 
took place, King John was always found, either to be eat- 
ing and drinking like a gluttonous tool, when the danger 
was at a distance, or to be running away, like a beaten 
cur; when it was near. 

You might suppose that when he was losing his 
dominions at this rate, and when his own Nobles cared so 
little for him or his cause that they plainly refused to 
follow his banner out of England, he had enemies enough. 

But he made another enemy of the Pope, which he did 
in tli is way. 

The Archbishop of Canterbury dying, and the junior 
monks of that place wishing to get the start of the senior 
monks in the appointment of his successor, met together 
at midnight, secretly elected a certain Reginald, and 
sent him off to Rome to get the Pope's approval. The 
senior monks and the King soon finding this out, and 
being very angry about it, the junior monks gave way, 
and all the monks together elected the Bishop of Nor- 
wich, who was the King's favorite. The Pope, hearing 
the whole story, declared that neither election would do 
for him, and that he elected Stephen Langton". The 
monks submitting to the Pope, the king turned them all 
out bodily, and banished them as traitors. The pope 
sent three bishops to the King, to threaten him with an 
Interdict. The King told the bishops that if any Inter- 
dict were laid upon his kingdom, he would tear out the 
eyes and cut off the noses of all the monks he could lay 
hold of, and send them over to Rome in that undec- 
orated state as a present for their master. The bishops, 
nevertheless, soon published the Interdict, and fled. 

After it had lasted a year, the Pope proceeded to his 
next step ; which was Excommunication. King John 
was declared excommunicated, with all the usual cere- 
monies. The King was so incensed at this, and was 
made so desperate by the disaffection of his 'Barons and 
the hatred of his people, that it is said he even privately 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 113 

sent ambassadors to the Turks in Spain, offering to re- 
nounce his religion and hold his kingdom of them if 
they would help him. It is related that the ambassadors 
were admitted to the piesence of the Turkish Emir 
through long lines of Moorish guards, and that they 
found the Emir with his eyes seriously fixed on the pages 
of a large book, from which he never once looked up. 
That they g;ive him a letter from the King containing 
his proposals, and were gravely dismissed. That pres- 
ently the Emir sent for one of them, and conjured him, 
by his faith in his religion, to say what kind of man the 
King of England truly was. That the ambassador, thus 
pressed, replied that the King of England was a false 
tyrant, against whom his own subjects would soon rise. 
And that this was quite enough for the Emir. 

Money being, in his position, the next best thing to 
men, King John spared no means of getting it. He set 
on foot another oppressing and torturing of the unhappy 
Jews (which was quite in his way), and invented a new 
punishment for one wealthy Jew of Bristol. Until such 
time as that Jew should produce a certain large sum of 
money, the King sentenced him to be imprisoned, and, 
every day, to have one tooth violently wrenched out of 
lis head— beginning with the double teeth. For seven 
days, the oppressed man bore the daily pain and lost the 
daily tooth ; but on the eighth he paid the money. With 
the treasure raised in such ways, the King made an ex- 
pedition into Ireland where some English nobles had 
revolted. It was one of the very few places from which 
he did not run away ; because no resistance was shown. 
lie made another expedition into Wales — whence he did 
run away in the end ; but not before he had got from the 
Welsh people, as hostages, twenty-seven young men of 
the best families ; every one of whom he caused to be 
Bain in the following year. 

To Interdict and Excommunication, the Pope now 
added 'his last sentence; Deposition. He proclaimed 
John no longer King, absolved all his subjects from their 
allegiance, and sent Stephen Langton and others to the 
King of FYance to tell him that, if he would invade Eng- 
land, he should be forgiven all his sins — at least, should 
be forgiven them by the Pope, if that would do. 

As there was nothing that King Philip desired more 



114 A CHILD'S BISTORT OF ENGLAND. 

than to invade England, he collected a great army at 
Rouen, and a fleet of seventeen hundred ships to bring 
them over. But the English people, however bitterly 
they hated the King, were not a people to suffer invasion 
quietly. They flocked to Dover, where the English stand- 
ard was, in such great numbers to enroll themselves as 
defenders of their native land, that there were not pro- 
visions for them, and the King could only select and re- 
tain sixty thousand. But, at this crisis, the Pope, who 
had his. own reasons for objecting to either King John 
or King Philip being too powerful, interfered. He in- 
trusted a legate, whose name was Pandolf, with the 
easy task of frightening King John. He sent him to the 
English Camp, from France, to terrify him with exagger- 
ations of King Philip's power, and his own weakness in 
the discontent of the English Barons and people. Pan- 
dolf discharged his commission so well, that King John, 
in a wretched panic, consented to acknowledge Stephen 
Langton ; to resign his kingdom " to God, Saint Peter, 
and Saint Paul " — which meant the Pope ; and to hold 
it ever afterwards, by the Pope's leave, on payment of an 
annual sum of money. To this shameful contract he 
publicly bound himself in the church of the Knights 
Templars at Dover : where he laid at the legate's feet a 
part of the tribute, which the legate haughtily trampled 
upon. But they do say, that this was merely a genteel 
flourish, and that he was afterwards seen to pick it up 
and pocket it. 

There was an unfortunate prophet, of the name of 
Peter, who had greatly increased King John's terrors by 
predicting that he would be unknighted (which the King 
supposed to signify that he would die) before the Feast 
of the Ascension should be past. That was the day after 
this humiliation. When the next morning came, and the 
King, who had been trembling all night, found himself 
alive and safe, he ordered the prophet — and his son too — 
to be dragged through the streets at the tails of horses, 
and then hanged, for having frightened him. 

As King John had now submitted, the Pope, to King 
Philip's great astonishment, took him under his protection, 
and informed King Philip that he found he could not 
give him leave to invade England. The angry Philip re- 
solved to do it without his leave ; but, he gained nothing 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 115 

and lost much ; for, the English, commanded by the 
Earl of Salisbury, went over, in rive hundred ships, to the 
French coast, before the French fleet had sailed away 
from it, and utterly defeated the whole. 

The Pope then took off his three sentences, one after 
another, and empowered Stephen Langton publicly to re- 
ceive King John into the favor of the Church again, and 
to ask him to dinner. The King, who hated Langton 
with all his might and main — a^fid with reason too, for he 
was a great and a good man, with whom such a King 
could have no sympathy — pretended to cry and to be 
very grateful. There was a little difficulty about set- 
tling how much the King should pay, as a recompense to 
the clergy for the losses he had caused them ; but the 
end of it was, that the superior clergy got a good deal 
and the inferior clergy got little or nothing — which has 
also happened since King John's time, I believe. 

When all these matters were arranged, the King in his 
triumph became more fierce, and false, and insolent to all 
around him than he had ever been. An alliance of 
sovereigns against King Philip, gave him an opportunity 
of landing an army in France ; with which he even took 
a town ! But on the French King's gaining a great vic- 
tory, he ran away, of course, and made a truce for five 
years. 

And now the time approached when he was to be still 
further humbled, and made to feel, if he could feel 
anything, what a wretched creature he was. Of all men in 
the world, Stephen Langton seemed raised up by Heaven to 
oppose and subdue him. When he ruthlessly burnt and 
destroyed the property of his own subjects, because their 
Lords, the Barons, would not serve him abroad, Stephen 
Langton fearlessly reproved and threatened him. When 
he swore to restore the laws of King Edward, or the laws 
of King Henry the First, Stephen Langton knew his 
falsehood, and pursued him through all his evasions. 
When the Barons met at the Abbey of Saint Edmund's- 
BurjT-, to consider their wrongs and the King's oppressions, 
Stephen Langton roused ihem by his fervid words to de- 
mand a solemn charter of rights and liberties from their 
perjured master, and to swear, one by one, on the High 
Altar, that they would have it, or would wage war 
against him to the death. When the King hid himself 



116 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGtANfr. 

in London from the Barons, and was at last obliged to 
receive them, they told him roundly they would not 
believe him unless Stephen Langton became a surety that 
he would keep his word. When lie took the Cross, to 
invest himself with some interest, and belong to some- 
thing that was received with favor, Stephen Langton 
was still immovable. When he appealed to the Pope, 
and the Pope wrote to Stephen Langton in behalf of 
his new favorite, Stephen Langton was deaf, even to 
the Pope himself, and saw before him nothing but 
the welfare of England and the crimes of the English 
King. 

At Easter-time, the Barons assembled at Stamford, in 
Lincolnshire, in proud array, and, marching near to Ox- 
ford where the King was, delivered into the hands of 
Stephen Langton and two others, a list of grievances. 
"And these," they said, " he must redress, or we will do 
it for ourselves ! " When Stephen Langton told the King 
as much, and read the list to him, he went half mad with 
rage. But that did him no more good than his afterwards 
trying to pacify the Barons with less. They called them- 
selves and their followers, "The army of God and the 
Holy Church." Marching through the country, witli the 
people thronging to them everywhere (except at North- 
ampton, where they failed in an attack upon the castle), 
they at last triumphantly set up their banner in London 
itself, whither the whole land, tired of the tyrant, seemed 
to flock to join them. Seven knights alone, of all the 
knights in England, remained with the King; who, re- 
duced to tliis strait, at last sent the Earl of Pembroke to 
the Barons to say that he approved of everything, and 
would meet them to sign their charter when thev would. 
"Then," said the Barons, "let the day be the fifteenth 
of .Tun p. and the place. Runny- Mead." 

On Monday, the fifteenth of June, one thousand two 
hundred and fourteen, the King came from Windsor 
Castle, and the Barons came from the town of Stains, 
and they met on Runny-Mead, which is still a pleasant 
meadow by the Thames, where rushes grow in the clear 
water and the winding 1 river, and its banks are green with 
grass and trees. On the side of the Barons, came the Gen- 
eral of their army, Robert Fitz Walter, and a great con- 
course of the nobility of England. With the King, came, 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND* 117 

in all, some four and twenty persons of any note, most 
of whom despised him, and were merely his advisers in 
form. On that great day, and in that great company* 
the King signed Magna Ciiarta— the great charter of 
England — by which he pledged himself to maintain t lie 
Church in its rights; to relieve the Barons of oppressive 
obligations as vassals of the crown — of which the Barons, 
in their turn, pledged themselves to relieve their vassals, 
the people; to respect the liberties of London and all 
other cities and boroughs ; to protect foreign merchants 
who came to England ; to imprison no man without a fair 
trial ; and to sell, delay, or deny, justice to none. As 
the Barons knew his falsehood well, they further required, 
as their securities, that he should send out of his king- 
dom all his foreign troops ; that for two months they 
should hold possession of the city of London, and Stephen 
Langton of the Tower; and that five and twenty of 
their body, chosen by themselves, should be a lawful 
committee to watch the keeping of the charter, and to 
make war upon him if he broke it. 

All this he was obliged to yield. He signed the charter 
with a smile, and, if he could have looked agreeable, would 
have done so, as he departed from the splendid assembly. 
When he got home to Windsor Castle, he was quite a 
madman in his helpless fury. And he broke the charter 
immediately afterwards. 

lie sent abroad for foreign soldiers, and sent to the 
Pope for help, and plotted to take London by surprise 
while the Barons should be holding a great tournament 
at Stamford, which they had agreed to hold there as a 
celebration of the charter. The Barons, however, found 
him out and put it off. Then, when the Barons desired 
to see him and tax him with his treacheryjie made num- 
bers of appointments with them, and kept none, and 
shifted from place to place, and was constantly sneaking 
and skulkinir about. At last he appeared at Dover to 
join his foreign soldiers, of whom numbers came into his 
pay; and with them be besieged and took Rochester Cas- 
tle, which was occupied by knights and soldiers of the 
Barons. He would have handed them every one; but 
the leader of the foreign soldiers, fearful of what the 
English people might afterwards do to him, interfered to 
save the knights; therefore the King was fain to satisfy 



118 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

his vengeance with the death of all the common men. 
Then, he sent the Earl of Salisbury, with one portion of 
his army, to ravage the eastern part of his own domin- 
ions, while he carried fire and slaughter into the northern 
part ; torturing, plundering, killing, and inflicting every 
possible cruelty upon the people; and every morning, 
setting a worthy example to his men by setting fire, with 
his own monster hands, to the house where he had slept 
last night. Nor was this all ; for, the Pope, coming to 
the aid of his precious friend, laid the kingdom under an 
Interdict again, because the people took part with the 
Barons. It did not much matter, for the people had 
grown so used to it now, that they begun to think noth- 
ing about it. It occurred to them— perhaps to Stephen 
Langton too — that they could keep their churches open, 
and ring their bells, without the Pope's permission as 
well as with it. So, they tried the experiment — and 
found that it succeeded perfectly. 

It being now impossible to bear the country, as a wil- 
derness of cruelty, or longer to hold any terms with such 
a forsworn outlaw of a King, the Barons sent to Louis, 
son of the French monarch, to offer him the English 
crown. Caring as little for the Pope's excommunication 
of him if he accepted the offer, as it is possible his father 
may have cared for the Pope's forgiveness of his sins, he 
landed at Sandwich (King John immediately running 
away from Dover, where he happened to be), and went 
on to London. The Scottish King, with whom many of 
the Northern English Lords had taken refuge ; numbers 
of the foreign soldiers, numbers of the barons, and num- 
bers of the people ; went over to him every day — King 
John, the while, continually running away in all direc- 
tions. The career of Louis was checked, however, by 
the suspicions of the Barons, founded on the dying dec- 
laration of a French Lord, that when the kingdom was 
conquered he was sworn to banish them as traitors, and 
to give their estates to some of his own Nobles. Rather 
than suffer this, some of the Barons hesitated : others 
even went over to King John. 

It seemed to be the turning-point of King John's fort- 
unes, for, in his savage and murderous course, he had 
now taken some towns and met with some successes. 
But, happily for England and humanity, his death was 



A CEIL&S BTSTOBY OF ENGLAND. 119 

near. Crossing a dangerous quicksand, called the Wash, 
not very far from Wisbeach, the tide came up and nearly- 
drowned his army. He and his soldiers escaped; but, 
looking back from the shore when he was safe, he saw 
the roaring water sweep down in a torrent, overturn the 
wagons, horses, and men, that carried his treasure, and 
ingulf them in a raging whirlpool from which nothing 
could be delivered. 

Cursing, and swearing, and gnawing his fingers he went 
on to Swinestead Abbey, where the monk set before him 
quantities of pears, and peaches, and new cider — some say 
poison too, but there is very little reason to suppose so— 
of which he ate and drunk in an immoderate and beastly 
way. All night he lay ill of a burning fever, and haunted 
with horrible fears. Next day, they put him in a horse- 
litter, and carried him to Sleaford Castle, where he 
passed another night of pain and horror. Next day, they 
carried him, with greater difficulty than on the day be- 
fore, to the castle of Newark upon Trent ; and there, on 
the eighteenth of October, in the forty-ninth year of his 
age, and the seventeenth of his vile reign, was an end of 
this miserable brute. 



CHAPTER XV. 

ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE THIRD, CALLED, OP WINCHESTER. 

If any of the English Barons remembered the mur- 
dered Arthur's sister, Eleanor the fair maid of Brittany, 
shut up in her convent a Bristol, none among them spoke 
of her now, or maintah ed her right to the Crown. The 
dead Usurper's eldest ooy, Henry by name, was taken by 
the Earl of Pembroke, the Marshal of England, to the 
city of Gloucester, and there crowned in great haste when 
he was only ten years old. As the Crown itself had been 
lost with the King's treasure, in the raging water, and as 
there was no time to make another, they put a circle of 
plain gold upon his head instead. "We have been the 
enemies of this child's father," said Lord Pembroke, a 
good and true gentleman, to the few Lords who were 
present, "and he merited our ill-will; but the child him- 



i20 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND 

self is innocent, and his youth demands onr friendship 
and protection. ' Those Lords felt tenderly towards the 
little boy, remembering their own young' children ; and 
they bowed their heads, and said, "Long live King Henry 
the Third!" 

Next, a. great council met at Bristol, revised Magna 
Charta, and made Lord Pembroke Regent or Protector of 
England, as the King was too young to reign alone. The 
next thing to be done, was, to get rid of Prince Louis of 
France, and to win over those English Barons who were 
still ranged under his banner. He was strong in many 
parts of England, and in London itself; and he held, 
among other places, a certain Castle called the Castle of 
Mount Sorel, in Leicestershire. To this fortress, after 
some skirmishing and truce-making, Lord Pembroke lnid 
siege. Louis despatched an army of six hundred knights 
and twenty thousand soldiers to relieve it. Lord Pem- 
broke, who was not strong enough for such a force, re- 
tired with all his men. The army of the French Prince, 
which had inarched there with fire and plunder, marched 
away with fire and plunder, and came, in a boastful 
swaggering manner, to Lincoln. The town submitted; 
but "the Castle in the town, held by a brave widow lady, 
named Nichola de Camville (whose property it was), 
made such a sturdy resistance, that the French Count in 
command of the Army of the French Prince, found it nec- 
essary to besiege this Castle. While he was thus en- 
gaged, word, was brought to him that Lord Pembroke, 
with four hundred knights, two hundred and fifty men 
with cross-bows, and a stout force both of horse and foot, 
was marching towards him. "What care I?" said the 
French Count. "The Englishman is not so mad as to 
attack me and my great army in a walled town!" But 
the Eno-lishman did it for all that, and did it— not so 
madly but so wisely, that he decoyed the great army into 
the narrow ill-paved lanes and by-ways of Lincoln, where 
its horse-soldiers could not, ride in any strong body; and 
there he made such havoc with them, that the whole force 
surrendered themselves prisoners, except the Count: who 
said that he would never yield to any English traitor 
alive, and accordingly got killed. The end of this vic- 
tory, which the English called, for a joke, the fair of Lin- 
coln, was the usual one in those times— the common men 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 121 

were slain without any mercy, and the knights and gen- 
tlemen paid ransom and went home. 

The wife of Louis, the fair Blanche of Castile, duti- 
fully equipped a fleet of eighty good ships, and sent it 
over from France to her husband's aid. An English fleet 
of forty ships, some good and some had, under Hubert 
de Burgh (who had before then been very brave against 
the French at Dover Castle), gallantly met them near the 
mouth of the Thames, and took or sunk sixty-five in one 
fight. This great loss put an end to the French Prince's 
hopes. A treaty was made at Lambeth, in virtue of 
which the English Barons who had remained attached to 
his cause returned to their allegiance, and it was engaged 
on both sides that the Prince and all his troops should 
retire peacefully to France. It was time to go; for war 
had made him so poor that he was obliged to borrow 
money from the citizens of London to pay his expenses 
home. 

Lord Pembroke afterwards applied himself to govern- 
ing the country justly, and to healing th quar els and 
disturbances that had arisen among in n in the days f 
the bad King John. He caused Magna Charta to be" still 
more improved, and so amended the Forest Lews that a 
peasant was no longer put to death for killing a stng in a 
Royal forest, but was only imprisoned. It would have 
been well for England if it could have had so good a Pro- 
tector many years longer, but that was not to be. With- 
in three years after the young King's Coronation, Lord 
Pembroke died; and you may see his tomb, at this day, 
in the old Temple Church in London. 

The Protectorship was now divided. Peter de 
Roches, whom King John had made Bishop of Winches- 
ter, was intrusted with the care of the person of the 
young sovereign ; and the exercise of the Royal authority: 
was confided to Earl Hubert de Burgh. These two 
personages had from the first no liking for each other, 
and soon became enemies. When the young King was 
declared of age, Peter de Roches, finding that Hubert in- 
creased in power and favor, retired discontentedly, and 
went abroad. For nearly ten years afterwards Hubert 
had full sway alone. 

But ten years is a long time to hold the favor of a 
JQng. This King, too, as he grew up, showed a strong 



122 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

resemblance to his father, in feebleness, inconsistency, and 
irresolution. The best that can be said of him is that he 
was not cruel. De Roches coming home again, after ten 
years, and being a novelty, the King began to favor him 
and to look coldly on Hubert. Wanting money besides, 
and having made Hubert rich, he began to dislike Hubert. 
At last he was made to believe, or pretended to believe, 
that Hubert had misappropriated some of the Royal treas- 
ure ; and ordered him to furnish an account of all he had 
done in his administration. Besides which, the foolish 
charge was brought against Hubert that he had made 
himself the King's favorite by magic. Hubert very well 
knowing that he could never defend himself against such 
nonsense, and that his old enemy must be determined on 
his ruin, instead of answering the charges fled to Merton 
Abbey. Then the King, in a violent passion, sent for the 
Mayor of London, and said to the Mayor, " Take twenty 
thousand citizens, and drag me Hubert dc Burgh out of 
that abbey, and bring him here." The Mayor posted off 
to do it, but the Archbishop of Dublin (who was a friend 
of Hubert's) warning the King that an abbey was a sacred 
place, and that if he committed any violence there, he 
must answer for it to the Church, the King changed his 
mind and called the Mayor back, and declared that Hu- 
bert should have four months to prepare his defence, and 
should be safe and free during that time. 

Hubert, who relied upon the King's word, though I 
think he was old enough to have known better, came out 
of Merton Abbey upon these conditions, and journeyed 
away to see his wife : a Scottish Princess who was then 
at St. Edmund's-Bury. 

Almost as soon as he had departed from the Sanctuary, 
his enemies persuaded the weak King to send out one Sir 
Godfrey de Crancumb, who commanded three hundred 
vagabonds called the Black Band, with orders to seize 
him. They came up with him at a little town in Essex 
called Brentwood, when he was in bed. He leaped out of 
bed, got out of the house, fled to the church, ran up to 
the altar, and laid his hand upon the cross. Sir Godfrey 
and the Black Band, caring neither for church, altar, nor 
cross, dragged him forth to the church door, with their 
drawn swords flashing round his head, and sent for a 
Smith to rivet a set of chains upon him, When the 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 123 

Smith (I wish I knew his name !) was brought, all dark 
and swarthy with the smoke of his forge, and panting 
With the speed he had made ; and the Black Band, falling 
aside to show him the Prisoner, cried with a loud uproar, 
" Make the fetters heavy ! make them strong ! " the 
Smith dropped upon his knee — but not to the Black Band 
— and said, "This is the brave Earl Hubert de Burgh, 
who fought at Dover Castle, and destroyed the French 
fleet, and has done his country much good service. You 
may kill me, if you like, but I will never make a chain for 
Earl Hubert de Burgh!" 

The Black Band never blushed, or they might have 
blushed at this. They knocked the Smith about from 
one to another, and swore at him, and tied the Earl on 
horseback, undressed as he was, and carried him off to 
the Tower of London. The Bishops, however, were so in- 
dignant at the violation of the Sanctuary of the Church, 
that the frightened King soon ordered the Black Band to 
take him back again ; at the same time commanding the 
Sheriff of Essex to prevent his escaping out of Brentwood 
church. Well ! the Sheriff dug a deep trench all round the 
church and erected a high fence, and watched the church 
night and day ; die Black Band and their Captain watched 
it too, like three hundred and one black wolves. For 
thirty-nine days, Hubert de Burgh remained within. At 
length, upon the fortieth day, cold and hunger were too 
much for him, and he gave himself up to the Blaok Band, 
who carried him off, for the second time, to the Tower. 
When his trial came on, he refused to plead ; but at last 
it was arranged that he should give up all the royal lands 
which had been bestowed upon him, and should be kept 
at the Castle of Devizes, in what was called " free prison," 
in charge of four knights appointed by four lords. There, 
he remained almost a year, until, learning that a follower 
of his old enemy the Bishop was made Keeper of the Cas- 
tle, and fearing that he might be killed by treachery, he 
climbed the ramparts one dark night, dropped from the 
top of the high Castle wall into the moat, and coming 
safely to the ground took refuge in another church. 
From this place he was delivered by a party of horse 
despatched to his help by some nobles, who were by this 
time in revolt against the King, and assembled in Wales. 
He was finally pardoned and restored to his estates, but 



124 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND, 

he lived privately, and never more aspired to a high post 
in the realm, or to a high place in the King's favor. And 
thus end—more happily than the stories of many favorites 
of Kings — the adventures of Earl Hubert de Burgh. 

The nobles, who had risen in revolt, were stirred up to 
rebellion by the overbearing conduct of the Bishop of 
Winchester, who, finding that the King secretly hated 
the Great Charter which had been forced from his father, 
did his utmost to confirm him in that dislike, and in the 
preference he showed to foreigners over the English. Of 
this, and of his even publicly declaring that the Barons of 
England were inferior to those of France, the English 
Lords complained with such bitterness, that the King, 
finding them well supported by the clergy, became 
frightened for his throne, and sent away the Bishop and 
all his foreign associates. On his marriage, however, 
with Eleanor, a French lady, the daughter of the Count 
of Provence, he openly favored the foreigners again ; and 
so many of his wife's relations came over, and made such 
an immense family party at court, and got so many good 
things, and pocketed so much money, and were so high with 
the English whose money they pocketed, that the bolder 
English Barons murmured openly about a clause there 
was in the Great Charter, which provided for the banish- 
ment of unreasonable favorites. But the foreigners only 
laughed disdainfully, and said, " What are your English 
laws to us?" 

King Philip of France had died, and hadheen succeeded 
by Prince Louis, who had also died after a short reign of 
three years, and had been succeeded by his son of the 
same name — so moderate and just a man, that he was not 
the least in the world like a King, as Kings went. 
Isabella, King Henry's mother, wished very much (for a 
certain spite she had) that England should make war 
against this King; and, as King Henry was a mere pup- 
pet in anybody's hands who knew how to manage his 
feebleness, she easily carried her point with him. But, 
the Parliament were determined to give him no money 
for such a war. So, to defy the Parliament, he packed up 
thirty large casks of silver — 1 don't know how he got so 
much ; I dare say he screwed it out of the miserable Jews 
— and put them aboard ship, and went away himself to 
carry war into France : accompanied by his mother- anc| 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 125 

his brother Richard, Earl of Cornwall, who was rich and 
clever. But he only got well beaten, and came home. 

The good-humor of the Parliament was not restored by 
this. They reproached the King with wasting the public 
money to make greedy foreigners rich, and were so stern 
with him, and so determined not to let him have more of 
it to waste if they could help it, that he was at his wits' 
end for some, and tried so shamelessly to get all he could 
from his subjects, by excuses and by force, that the peo- 
ple used to say the King was the sturdiest beggar in 
England. He took the Cross, thinking to get some money 
by that means ; but, as it was very well known that he 
never meant to go on a crusade, he got none. In all this 
contention, the Londoners were particularly keen against 
the King, and the King hated them warmly in return. 
Hating or loving, however, made no difference ; he con- 
tinued in the same condition for nine or ten years, when 
at last the Barons said that if he would solemnly confirm 
their liberties afresh, the Parliament would vote him a 
large sum. 

As he readily consented, there was a great meeting held 
in Westminster Hall, one pleasant day in May, when all 
the clergy, dressed in their robes and holding every one 
of them a burning candle in his hand, stood up (the 
Barons being also there) while the Archbishop of Canter- 
bury read the sentence of excommunication against any 
man, and all men, who should henceforth, in any way, 
infringe the Great Charter of the Kingdom. When he 
had done, they all put out their burning candles with a 
curse upon the soul of any one, and every one, who should 
merit that sentence. The King concluded with an oath 
to keep the Charter, "as I am a man, as I am a Christian, 
as lama Knight, as I am a King! " 

It was easy to make oaths, and easy to break them, and 
the King did both, as his father had done before him,. 
He took to his old courses again when he was supplied 
with money, and soon cured of their weakness the few 
who had ever really trusted him. When his money was 
gone, and he was once more borrowing and begging 
everywhere with a meanness worthy of his nature, he got 
into a difficulty with the Pope respecting the Crown of 
Sicily, which the Pope said he had a right to give away, 
and which he offered to King Henry for his second son 5 



126 A CHILD'S HISTOEY OF ENGLAND. 

Prince Edmund. But, if you or I give away what we 
have not got, and what belongs to somebody else, it is 
likely that the person to whom we give it, will have some 
trouble in taking it. It was exactly so in' this case. It 
was necessary to conquer the Sicilian Crown before it 
could be put upon young Edmund's head. It could not 
be conquered without money. The Pope ordered the 
clergy to raise money. The clergy, however, were not so 
obedient to him as usual; they had been disputing with 
him for some time about his unjust preference of Italian 
Priests in England ; and they bad begun to doubt whether 
the King's chaplain, whom he allowed to be paid for 
preaching in seven hundred churches, could possibly be, 
even by the Pope's favor, in seven hundred places at once. 
"The Pope and the King together," said the Bishop of 
London, " may take the mitre off my head ; but, if they 
do, they will find that I shall put on a soldier's helmet. 
I pay nothing." The Bishop of Worcester was as bold as 
the Bishop of London, and j would pay nothing either. 
Such sums as the more timid or more helpless of the clergy 
did raise were squandered away, without doing any good 
to the King, or bringing the Sicilian Crown an inch nearer 
to Prince Edmund's head. The end of the business was, 
that the Pope gave the crown to the brother of the King 
of France (who conquered it for himself), and sent the 
King of England in a bill for one hundred thousand 
pounds for the expenses of not having won it. ; 

The King was now so much distressed that we might 
almost pity him, if it were possible to pity a King so 
shabby and ridiculous. His clever brother, Richard, had 
bought the title of King of the Romans from the German 
people, and was no longer near him to help him with 
advice. The clergy, resisting the very Pope, were in 
alliance with the Barons. The Barons were headed by 
Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, married to King 
Henry's sister, and, though a foreigner himself, the most 
popular man in England against the foreign favorites. 
When the King next met his Parliament, the Barons, led 
by this Earl, came before him, armed from head to foot, 
and cased in armor. When the Parliament again 
assembled, in a month's time, at Oxford, this Earl was at 
their head, and the King was obliged to consent, on oath, 
to what was called a Committee of Government; consist- 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 12? 

ing- of twenty-four members ; twelve chosen by the 
Barons, and twelve chosen by himself. 

But, at a good time for him, his brother Richard came 
back. Richard's first act (the Barons would not let him 
into England on other terms) was to swear to be faithful 
to the Committee of Government — which he immediately 
began to oppose with all his might. Then, the Barons 
began to quarrel among themselves ; especially the proud 
Earl of Gloucester with the Earl of Leicester, who went 
abroad in disgust. Then, the people began to be dissatis- 
fied with the Barons, because they did not do enough for 
them. The King's chances seemed so good again at 
length, that he took: heart enough — or caught it from his 
brother — to tell the Committee of Government that he 
abolished them— as to his oath, never mind that, the Pope 
said ! — and to seize all the money in the Mint, and to shut 
himself up in the Tower of London. Here he was joined 
by his eldest son, Prince Edward; and, from the Tower, 
he made public a letter of the Pope's to the world in 
general, informing all men that he had been an excellent 
and just King for five and forty years. 

As everybody knew he had been nothing of the sort, 
nobody cared much for this document. It so chanced that 
the proud Earl of Gloucester dying, was succeeded by his 
son ; and that his son, instead of being the enemy of the 
Earl of Leicester, was (for the time) his friend. It fell 
out, therefore, that these two Earls joined their forces, 
took several of the Royal Castles in the country, and ad- 
vanced as hard as they could on London. The London 
people, always opposed to the King, declared for them with 
great joy. The King himself remained shut up, not at ail 
gloriously, in the Tower. Prince Edward made the best 
of his way to Windsor Castle. His mother, the Queen, 
attempted to follow him by water ; but, the people seeing 
her barge rowing up the river, and hating her with all 
their hearts, ran to London Bridge, got together a quan- 
tity of stones and mud, and pelted the barge as it came 
through, crying furiously, "Drown the Witch! Drown 
her ! " They were so near doing it, that the Mayor took 
the old lady under his protection, and shut her up in St. 
Paul's until the danger was past. 

It would require a great deal of writing on my part and a 
great deal of reading on yours, to follow the King through 



128 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND, 

his disputes with the Barons, and to follow the Barons 
through their disputes with one another — so I will make 
short work of it for both of us, and only relate the chief 
events that arose out of these quarrels. The good King 
of France was asked to decide between them. He gave it 
as his opinion that the King must maintain the Great 
Charter, and that the Barons must give up the. Commit- 
tee of Government, and all the rest that had been done by 
the Parliament at Oxford : which the Koyalists, or King's 
party, scornfully called the Mad Parliament. The Barons 
declared that these were not fair terms, and they would 
not accept them. Then they caused the great bell of St. 
Paul's to be tolled, for the purpose of rousing up the Lon- 
don people, who armed themselves at the dismal sound and 
formed quite an army in the streets. I am sorry to say, 
however, that instead of falling upon the King's party 
with whom their quarrel was, they fell upon the miserable 
Jews, and killed at least five hundred of them. They 
pretended that some of these Jews were on the King's 
side, and that they kept hidden in their houses, for the 
destruction of the people, a certain terrible composition 
called Greek Fire, which could not be put out with water, 
but only burnt the fiercer for it. What they really did keep 
in their houses was money; and this their cruel enemies 
wanted, and this their cruel enemies took, like robbers 
and murderers. 

The Earl of Leicester put himself at the head of these 
Londoners and other forces, and followed the Kingto Lewes 
in Sussex, where he lay encamped with his army. Before 
giving the King's forces battle here, the earl addressed Ins 
soldiers, and said that King Henry the Third had broken 
so many oaths, that he had become the enemy of God, and 
therefore they would wear white crosses on their breasts, 
as if they were arrayed, not against a fellow-Christian, but 
against a Turk. White-crossed accordingly, they rushed 
into the fight. They would have lost the day — the King 
having on his side all the foreigners in England : and 
from Scotland, John - Comyn, Johx Baliol, and Robert 
Bruce, with all their men — but for the impatience of 
Prince Edward, who, in his hot desire to have venge- 
ance on the people of London, threw the whole of his 
father's army into confusion. He was taken prisoner; so 
was the King; so was the King's brother the King of th@ 



A CHILES BISTORT OP ENGLAND. 129 

Romans ; and five thousand Englishmen were left dead 
upon the bloody grass. 

For this success, the Pope excommunicated the Earl of 
Leicester: which neither the Earl nor the people cared at 
all about. The people loved him and supported him, and 
he became the real King; having all the power of the 
government in his own hands, though he was outwardly 
respectful to King Henry the Third, whom he took with 
him wherever he went, like a poor old limp court-card. 
lie summoned a Parliament (in the year one thousand 
two hundred and sixty-five) which was the first Parlia- 
ment in England that the people had any real share in 
electing; and he grew more and more in favor with the 
people every day, and they stood by him in whatever he 
did. 

Many of the other Barons, and particularly the Earl of 
Gloucester, who had become by this time as proud as his 
father, grew jealous of this powerful and popular Earl, 
who was proud too, and began to conspire against him. 
Since the battle of Lewes, Prince Edward had been kept 
as a hostage, and, though he was otherwise treated like a 
Prince, had never been allowed to go out without attend- 
ants appointed by the Earl of Leicester, who watched 
him. The conspiring Lords found means to propose to 
him, in secret, that they should assist him to escape, and 
should make him their leader; to which he very heartily 
consented. 

So, on a day that was agreed upon, he said to his at- 
tendants after dinner (being then at Hereford), "I should 
like to ride on horseback, this fine afternoon, a little way 
into the country." As they, too, thought it would be 
very pleasant to have a canter in the sunshine, they all 
rode out of the town together in a gay little troop. When 
they came to a. fine level piece of turf, the Prince fell to 
comparing their horses one with another, and offering 
bets that one was faster than another; and the attendants, 
suspecting no harm, rode galloping matches until their 
horses were quite tired. The Prince rode no matches 
himself, but looked on from his saddle, and staked his 
money. Thus they passed the whole merry afternoon. 
Now, the sun was setting, and they were all going slowly 
up a hill, the Prince's horse very fresh, and all the other 
horses very weary, when a strange rider mounted on a 



ISO A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

gray steed appeared at the top of the hill, and waved his 
hat. " What does the fellow mean ? " said the attendants 
one to another. The Prince answered on the instant, by 
setting spurs to his horse, dashing away at his utmost 
speed, joining the man, riding into the midst of a little 
crowd of horsemen who were then seen waiting under 
some trees, and who closed around him ; and so he de- 
parted in a cloud of dust, leaving the road empty of all 
but the baffled attendants, who sat looking at one another, 
while their horses drooped their ears and panted. 

The Prince joined the Earl of Gloucester at Ludlow. 
The Earl of Leicester, with a part of the army and the 
stupid old King, was at Hereford. One of the Earl of 
Leicester's sons, Simon de Montfort, with another part of 
the army was in Sussex. To prevent these two parts from 
uniting was the Prince's first object. He attacked Simon 
de Montfort by night, defeated him, seized his banners 
and treasure, and forced him into Kenilworth Castle in 
Warwickshire, which belonged to his family. 

His father, the Earl of Leicester, in the mean while, 
not knowing what had happened, marched out of Here- 
ford, with his part of the army and the King, to meet 
him. He came, on a bright morning in August, to Eves- 
ham, which is watered by the pleasant river Avon. 
Looking rather anxiously across the prospect towards 
Kenilworth, he saw his own banners advancing ; and his 
face brightened with joy. But, it clouded darkly when 
he presently perceived that the banners were captured, 
and in the enemy's hands ; and he said, " It is over. The 
Lord have mercy on our souls, for our bodies are Prince 
Edward's ! " 

He fought like a true Knight, nevertheless. When his 
horse was killed under him he fought on foot. It was a 
fierce battle, and the dead lay in heaps everywhere. The 
old King, stuck up in a suit of armor on a big war-horse, 
which didn't mind him at all, and which carried him into 
all sorts of places where he didn't want to go, got into 
everybody's way, and very nearly got knocked on the 
head by one of his son's men. But he managed to pipe 
out, " I am Harry of Winchester ! " and the Prince, who 
heard him, seized his bridle, and took him out of peril. 
The Earl of Leicester still fought bravely, until his best 
son Henry was killed, and the bodies of his best friends 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 131 

choked his path; and then he fell, still fighting, sword 
in hand. They mangled his hody, and sent it as a present 
to a noble lady — but a very unpleasant lady, I should 
think — who was the wife of his worst enemy. They 
could not mangle his memory in the minds of the faithful 
people, though. Many years afterwards, they loved him 
more than ever, and regarded him as a Saint, and always 
spoke of him as " Sir Simon the Righteous." 

And even though he was dead, the cause for which he 
had fought still lived, and was strong, and forced itself 
upon the King in the very hour of victory. Henry found 
himself obliged to respect the Great Charter, however 
much he hated it, and to make laws similar to the laws of 
the Great Earl of Leicester, and to be moderate and for- 
giving towards the people at last — even towards the 
people of London, who had so long opposed him. There 
were more risings before all this was done, but they were 
set at rest by these means, and Prince Edward did his 
best in all things to restore peace. One Sir Adam de 
Gourdon was the last dissatisfied knight in arms ; but, 
the Prince vanquished him in single combat, in a wood, 
and nobly gave him his life, and became his friend, instead 
of slaying him. Sir Adam was not ungrateful. He ever 
afterwards remained devoted to his generous conqueror. 

When the troubles of the Kingdom were thus calmed, 
Prince Edward and his cousin Henry took the Cross, 
and went away to the Holy Land, with many English 
Lords and Knights. Four years afterwards the King of 
the Romans died, and, next year (one thousand two hun- 
dred and seventy-two), his brother the weak King of 
England died. He was sixty-eight years old then, and 
had reigned fifty-six years. He was as much of a King 
in death, as he had ever been in life. He was the mere 
pale shadow of a King at all times. 



132 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND* 



CHAPTER XVI. 

ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE FIRST, CALLED LONG SHANKS. 

It was now the year of our Lord one thousand two 
hundred and seventy-two; and Prince Edward, the heir 
to the throne, being away in the Holy Land, knew noth- 
ing of his father's death. The Barons, however, pro- 
claimed him King, immediately after the Royal funeral ; 
and the people very willingly consented, since most men 
knew too well by this time what the horrors of a contest for 
the crown were. So King Edward the First, called, in not 
a very complimentary manner, Longshanks, because of 
the slenderuess of his legs, was peacefully accepted by the 
English Nation. 

His legs had need to be strong, however long and thin 
they were ; for they had to support him through many dif- 
ficulties on the fiery sands of Asia, where his small force 
of soldiers fainted, died, deserted, and seemed to melt 
away. But his prowess made light of it, and he said, "I 
will go on, if I go on with no other follower than my 
groom ! " 

A Prince of this spirit gave the Turks a deal of trouble. 
He stormed Nazareth, at which place, of all places on 
earth, I am sorry to relate, he made a frightful slaughter 
of innocent people ; and then he went to Acre, where he 
got a truce of ten years, from the Sultan. He had very 
nearly lost his life in Acre, through the treachery of a 
Saracen Noble, called the Emir of Jaffa, who, making the 
pretence that he had some idea of turning -Christian and 
wanted to know all about that religion, sent a trusty 
messenger to Edward very often — with a dagger in his 
sleeve. At last, one Friday in Whitsnn week, when it 
was very hot, and all the sandy prospect lay beneath the 
blazing sun, burnt up like a great overdone biscuit, and 
Edward was lying on a couch, dressed for coolness in only 
a loose robe, the messenger, with his chocolate-colored 
face and his bright dark eyes and white teeth, came creep- 
ing in with a letter, and kneeled down like a tame tiger. 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 133 

But the moment Edward stretched out his hand to take 
the letter, the tiger made a spring at his heart. He was 
quick, bat Edward was quick too. He seized the traitor 
by his chocolate throat, threw him to the ground, and 
slew him with the very dagger he had drawn. The 
weapon had struck Edward in the arm, and although the 
wound itself was slight, it threatened to be mortal, for 
the blade of the dagger had been smeared with poison. 
Thanks, however, to a better surgeon than was often to 
be found in those times, and to some wholesome herbs, 
and above all, to his faithful wife, Eleanor, who devotedly 
nursed him, and is said by some to have sucked the poison 
from the wound with her own red lips (which I am very 
willing to believe), Edward soon recovered and was sound 
again. 

As the King his father had sent entreaties to him to 
return home, he now began the journey. He had got as 
far as Italy, when he met messengers who brought him 
intelligence of the King's death. Hearing that all was 
quiet ?it home, he made no haste to return to his own 
dominions, but paid a visit to the Pope, and went in state 
through various Italian Towns, where he was welcomed 
with acclamations as a mighty champion of the Cross 
from the Holy Land, and where he received presents of 
purple mantles and prancing horses, and went along in 
great triumph. The shouting people little knew that he 
was the last English monarch who would ever embark in 
a crusade, or that within twenty years every conquest 
which the Christians had made in the Holy Land at the 
cost of so much blood, would be won back by the Turks. 
But all this came to pass. 

There was, and there is, an old town standing in a 
plain in France, called Chalons. When the King was 
coming towards this place on his way to England, a wily 
French Lord, called the Count of Chalons, sent him a 
polite challenge to come with his knights and hold a. fair 
tournament with the Count and his knights, and make a 
day of it with sword and lance. It was represented to 
the King that tire Count of Chalons was not to be trusted, 
and that, instead of a holiday fight for mere show and in 
good-humor, he secretly meant a real battle, in which the 
English should be defeated by superior force. 

The King, however, nothing afraid, went to the ap- 



134 A CHILD'S HISTO&Y OF ENGLAND. 

pointed place on the appointed day with a thousand 
followers. When the Count came with two thousand 
and attacked the English in earnest, the English rushed 
at them with such valor that the Count's men and the 
Count's horses soon began to be tumbled down all over 
the field. The Count himself seized the King round the 
neck, but the King tumbled him out of his saddle in 
return for the compliment, and, jumping from his own 
horse, and standing over him, beat away at his iron 
armor like a blacksmith hammering on his anvil. Even 
when the Count owned himself defeated and offered his 
sword, the King would not do him the honor to take it, 
but made him yield it up to a common soldier. There 
had been such fury shown in this fight, that it was after- 
wards called the little Battle of Chalons. 

The English were very well disposed to be proud of 
their King after these adventures ; so, when he landed at 
Dover in the year one thousand two hundred and seventy- 
four (being then thirty-six years old), and went on to 
Westminster where he and his good queen were crowned 
with great magnificence, splendid rejoicings took place. 
For the coronation-feast there were provided, among 
other eatables, four hundred oxen, four hundred sheep, 
four hundred and fifty pigs, eighteen wild boars, three 
hundred flitches of bacon, and twenty thousand fowls. 
The fountains and conduits in the streets flowed with red 
and white wine instead of water; the rich citizens hung 
silks and cloths of the brightest colors out of their win- 
dows to increase the beauty of the show, and threw out 
gold and silver by whole handfuls to make scrambles for 
the crowd. In short, there was such eating and drink- 
ing, such music and capering, such a ringing of bells and 
tossing-up of caps, such a shouting, and singing, and 
revelling, as the narrow overhanging streets of old Lon- 
don City had not witnessed for many a long day. All 
the people were merry — except the poor jews, who, 
trembling within their houses, and scarcely daring to 
peep out, began to foresee that they would have to find 
the money for this joviality sooner or later. 

To dismiss this sad subject of the Jews for the present, 
I am sorry to add that in this reign they were most un, 
mercifully pillaged. They were hanged in great numbers, 
on accusations of having clipped the King's coin — which 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 135 

all kinds of people had done. They were heavily taxed ; 
they were disgracefully badged ; they were, on one day, 
thirteen years after the coronation, taken up with their 
wives and children, and thrown into beastly prisons, until 
they purchased their release by paying to the King 
twelve thousand pounds. Finally, every kind of property 
belonging to them was seized by the King, except so lit- 
ye as would defray the charge of their taking themselves 
away into foreign countries. Many years elapsed before 

1 the hope of gain induced any of their race to return to 
England, where they had been treated so heartlessly and 

: had suffered so much. 

If King Edward the First had been as bad a king to 
Christians as he was to Jews, he would have been bad 

j indeed. But he was, in general, a wise and great mon- 

j arch, under whom the country much improved. He had 
no love for the Great Charter — few kings had, through 
many many years— but he had high qualities. The first 
bold object that he conceived when became home, was, to 

J unite under one Sovereign England, Scotland, and Wales ; 
the two last of which countries had each a little king of 

fits own, about whom the people were always quarrelling 

; and fighting and making a prodigious disturbance — a great 
deal more than he was worth. In the course of King 
Edward's reign he was engaged, besides, in a war with 
France. To make these quarrels clearer, we will separate 
their histories and take them thus. Wales, first. France, 
second. Scotland, third. 

Llewellyn was the Prince of Wales. He had been on 
the side of the Barons in the reign of the stupid old 
King, but had afterwards sworn allegiance to him. 
When King Edward came to the throne, Llewellyn was 
required to swear allegiance to him also; which he re- 
fused to do. The King, being crowned and in his own 
dominions, three times more required Llewellyn to come 
and do homage: and three times more Llewellyn said 
he would rather not. He was going to be married to 
Eleanor de Montfort, a young lady of the family 
mentioned in the last reign ; and it chanced that this 
young lady, coming from France with her youngest 
brother, Emeric, was taken by an English ship, and was 
ordered by the English King to be detained. Upon this, 



136 A CHILD'S MlSTOitY. OP ENGLAND 

the quarrel came to a head. The King went, with hii 
fleet, to the coast of Wales, where, so encompassing 
Llewellyn, that he could only take refuge in the bleal 
mountain region of Snowdon, in which no provisions 
could reach him, he was soon starved into an apology am 
into a treaty of peace, and into paying the expenses of 
the war. The King, however, forgave him some of the 
hardest conditions of the treaty, and consented to hjs 
marriage. And he now thought he had reduced Wales 
to obedience. 

But, the Welsh, although they were naturally a gentle, 
quiet, pleasant people, who liked to receive strangers in 
their cottages among the mountains, and to set before 
them with free hospitality whatever they had to eat and 
drink, and to play to them on their harps, and sing their 
native ballads to them, were a people of great spirit when 
their blood was up. Englishmen, after this affair, began 
to be insolent in Wales, and to assume the air of masters; 
and the Welsh pride could not bear it. Moreover, they 
believed in that unlucky old Merlin, some of whose un- 
lucky old prophecies somebody always seemed doomed to 
remember when there was a chance of its doing harm; 
and just at this time some blind old gentleman with a 
harp and a long white beard, who was an excellent person, 
but had become of an unknown age and tedious, burst out 
with a declaration that Merlin had predicted that when 
English money should become round, a Prince of Wales 
would be crowned in London. Now, King Edward had 
recently forbidden the English penny to be cut into 
halves and quarters ice halfpence and farthings, and had 
actually introduced a round coin ; therefore, the Welsh 
people said this was the time Merlin meant, and rose 
accordingly. 

King Edward had bought over Prixce David, Llewel- 
lyn's brother, by heaping favors upon him; but he was 
the first to revolt, being perhaps troubled in his con- 
science. One stormy night, he surprised the Castle of 
Ilawnrden, in possession of which an English nobleman 
had been left; killed the whole garrison, and carried off 
the nobleman a prisoner to Snowdon. Upon this, the 
Welsh people rose like one man. King Edward, with his 
army, marching from Worcester to the Me-nai Strait, 
crossed it — near to where the wonderful tubular iron 



A CHILD'S HISTOBT OF ENGLAND. 137 

bridge now, in days so different, makes a passage for 
railway trains — by a bridge of boats that enabled forty 
men to march abreast. Pie subdued the Island of Angle- 
sea, and sent his men forward to observe the enemy. The 
sudden appearance of the Welsh created a panic among 
them, and they fell back to the bridge. The tide had in 
thejnean time risen and separated the boats ; the Welsh 
pursuing them, they were driven into the sea, and there 
they sunk, in their heavy iron armor, by thousands. 
After this victory Llewellyn, helped by the severe 
winter- weather of Wales, gained another battle ; but the 
King ordering a portion of his English army to advance 
through South Wales, and catch him between two foes, 
and Llewellyn bravely turning to meet this new enemy, 
iie was surprised and killed — very meanly, for he was un- 
armed and defenceless. His head was struck off and sent 
to London, where it was fixed upon the tower, encircled 
with a wreath, some say of ivy, some say of willow, some 
say of silver, to make it look like a ghastly coin in ridicule 
of the prediction. 

David, however, still held out for six months, though 
eagerly sought after by the King, and hunted by his 
own countrymen. One of them finally betrayed him with 
his wife and children. He was sentenced to be hanged, 
drawn, and quartered ; and, from that time this became 
the established punishment of Traitors in England — a 
punishment wholly without excuse, as being revolting, 
vile, and cruel, after its ohject is dead ; and which has no 
sense in it, as its only real degradation (and that nothing 
can blot out) is to the country that permits on any con- 
sideration such abominable barbarity. 

Wales was now subdued. The Queen giving birth to a 
young prince in the Castle of Carnarvon, the King showed 
him to the Welsh people as their countryman, and called 
.iim Prince of Wales; a title that has ever since been 
Jrmrne by the heir-apparent to the English throne — which 
Idiat little Prince soon became, by the death of his elder 
tether. Th« King did better things for the Welsh than 
] Jiat, by improving their laws and encouraging their trade. 
Disturbances still took place, chiefly occasioned by the 
,tvarice and pride of the English Lords, on whom Welsh 
ands and castles had been bestowed ; but they were sub- 
iuedj and tlie country never rose again. There i§ a 



138 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

legend that to prevent the people from being incited to 
rebellion by the songs of their bards and harpers, Ed- 
ward had them all put to death. Some of them may- 
have fallen among other men who held out against the 
King; but this general slaughter is, I think, a fancy of 
the harpers themselves, who, I dare say, made a song 
about it many years afterwards, and sang it by the Welsh 
firesides until it came to be believed. 

The foreign war of the reign of Edward the First arose 
in this way. The crews of two vessels, one a Norman 
ship, and the other an English ship, happened to go to 
the same place in their boats to fill their casks with fresh 
water. Being rough angry fellows, they began to quarrel, 
and then to fight — the English with their fists ; the Nor- 
mans with their knives, and, in the fight, a Norman was 
killed. The Norman crew, instead of revenging them- 
selves upon those English sailors with whom they had 
quarrelled (who were too strong for them, I suspect), took 
to their ship again in a great rage, attacked the first Eng- 
lish ship they met, laid hold of an unoffending merchant 
who happened to be on board, and brutally hanged him 
in the rigging of their own vessel with a dog at his feet. 
This so enraged the English sailors that there was no re- 
straining them ; and whenever, and wherever, English 
sailors met Norman sailors, they fell upon each other 
tooth and nail. The Irish and Dutch sailors took part 
with the English ; the French and Genoese sailors helped 
the Normans ; and thus the greater part of the mariners, 
sailing over the sea became, in their way, as violent and 
raging as the sea itself when it is disturbed. 

King Edward's fame had been so high abroad that he 
had been chosen to decide a difference between France 
and another foreign power, and had lived upon the Conti- 
nent three years. At first, neither he nor the French 
King Philip (the good Louis had been dead some time) 
interfered in these quarrels ; but when a fleet of eighty 
English ships engaged and utterly defeated a Norman 
fleet of two hundred, in a pitched battle fought round a 
ship at anchor, in which no quarter was given, the matter 
became too serious to be passed over. King Edward, as 
Duke of Guienne, was summoned to present himself 
before the King of France, at Paris, and answer for the I 



A CHILD'S HISTORY&OF ENGLAND. 139 

damage clone by his sailor subjects. At first, he sent the 
Bishop of London as his representative, and then his 
brother Edmund, who was married to the French Queen's 
mother. 1 am afraid Edmund was an easy man, and 
allowed himself to be talked over by his charming re- 
lations, the French court ladies; at all events, he was 
induced to give up his brother's dukedom for forty days — 
as a mere form, the French king said, to satisfy his 
honor — and he was so very much astonished, when the 
time was out, to find that the French King had no idea 
of giving it up again, that I should not wonder if it 
hastened his death : which soon took place. 

King Edward was a King to win his foreign dukedom 
back again, if it could be won by energy and valor. He 
raised a large army, renounced his allegiance as Duke of 
Guienne, and crossed the sea to carry war into France. 
Before any important battle was fought, however, a 
truce was agreed upon for two years ; and, in the course 
of that time, the Pope effected a reconciliation. King Ed- 
ward, who was now a widower, having lost his affectionane 
and good wife Eleanor, married the French King's sister 
Margaret; and the Prince of Wales was contracted 
to the French King's daughter Isabella. 

Out of bad things, good things sometimes arise. Out 
of this hanging of the innocent merchant, and the blood- 
shed and strife it caused, there came to be established one of 
the greatest powers that the English people now possess. 
The preparations for the war being very expensive, and 
King Edward greatly wanting money, and being very 
arbitrary in his ways of raising it, some of the Barons 
began firmly to oppose him. Two of them, in particular, 
Humphrey Bohun, Earl of Hereford, and Roger Bigod, 
Earl of Norfolk, were so stout against him, that they 
maintained he had no right to command them to lead his 
forces in Guienne, and flatly refused to go there. " By 
Heaven, Sir Earl," said the King to the Earl of Hereford, 
in a great passion, " you shall either go or be hanged ! -' 
— " By Heaven, Sir King," replied the Earl of Hereford, 
1 1 will neither go nor yet will I be hanged ! " and both he 
and the other Earl sturdily left the court, attended by 
many Lords. The King tried every means of raising 
money. He taxed the clergy in spite of all the Pope said 
to the contrary ; and when they refused to pay, reduced 



140 A GUILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

them to submission, by saying, Very well, then they had 
no claim upon the government for protection, and any 
man might plunder them who would — which a good 
many men were ever ready to do, and very readily did, 
and which the clergy found too losing a game to be 
played at long. He seized all the wool and leather in the 
hands of the merchants, promising to pay for it some 
fine day ; and he set a tax upon the exportation of wool, 
which was so unpopular among the traders that it was 
called "The evil toll." But all would not do. The 
Barons, led by those two great Earls, declared any taxes 
imposed without the consent of Parliament, unlawful; 
and the Parliament refused to impose taxes, until the 
King should confirm afresh, the two Great Charters, and. 
should solemnly declare in writing, that there was no 
power in the country to raise money from the people, 
evermore, but the power of Parliament representing all 
ranks of the people. The King was very unwilling to 
diminish his own power by allowing this great privilege 
in the Parliament; but there was no help for it, and heat 
last complied. We shall come to another King by and 
by, who might have saved his head from rolling off, if he 
had profited by this example. 

The people gained other benefits in Parliament from 
the good sense and wisdom of this King. Many of the 
laws were much improved; provision was made for the 
greater safety of travellers, and the apprehension of 
thieves and murderers; the priests were prevented from 
holding too much land, and so becoming too powerful; 
and Justices of the Peace were first appointed (though 
not at first under that name) in various parts of the coun- 
try. 

And now we come to Scotland, which was the great 
and lasting trouble of the reign of King Edward the 
First. 

About thirteen years after King Edward's coronation, 
Alexander the Third, the King of Scotland, died of a fall 
from his horse. He had been married to Margaret, King 
Edward's sister. All their children being dead, the Scot- 
tish crown became the right of a young Princess, only 
eight years old, the daughter of Eric, King of Norway, 
who liad married a daughter of the deceased sovereign, 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 141 

King Edward proposed, that the Maiden of Norway, as 
this Princess was called, should be engaged to be 
married to his eldest son ; but, unfortunately, as she was 
coming over to England she fell sick, and landing on one 
of the Orkney Islands, died there. A great commotion 
immediately began in Scotland, where as many as thirteen 
noisy claimants to the vacant throne started up and made 
a general confusion. 

King Edward being much renowned for his sagacity 
and justice, it seems to have been agreed to refer the dis- 
pute to him. lie accepted the trust, and went, with an 
army, to the border-land where England and Scotland 
joined. There, he called upon the Scottish gentlemen to 
meet him at the Castle of Norham, on the English side 
of the river Tweed ; and to that Castle they came. But, 
before lie would take any step in the business, he required 
those Scottish gentlemen, one and all, to do homage to 
him as their superior Lord; and when they hesitated, he 
said, "By holy Edward, whose crown I wear, I will have 
my rights, or I will die in maintaining them!" The 
Scottish gentlemen, who had not expected this, were 
disconcerted, and asked for three weeks to think about 
it. 

At the end of the three weeks, another meeting took 
place, on a green plain on the Scottish side of the liver. 
Of all the competitors for the Scottish throne, there were 
only two who had any real claim, in right of their near 
kindred to the Royal family. These were John Baltol 
and Robert Bruce: and the right was, I have no doubt, 
on the side of John Baliol. At this particular meeting 
I John Baliol was not present, but Robert Bruce was; and 
|jn Robert Bruce being formally asked whether he ac- 
knowledged the King of England for his superior lord, 
Ihe answered, plainly and distinctly, Yes, he did. Next 
■lay, John Baliol appeared, and said the same. This 
Doint settled, some arrangements were made for inquir- 
ing into their titles. 

The inquiry occupied a, pretty long time — more than a 
/ear. While it was going 1 on, King Edward took the op- 
portunity of making a journey through Scotland, and 
piling upon the Scottish people of all degrees to acknowl- 
edge themselves his vassals, or be imprisoned until they 
iid, In the mean while, Commissioners were appointee! 



142 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND, 

to conduct the inquiry, a Parliament was held at Berwick 
about it, the two claimants were heard at full length, 
and there was a vast amount of talking. At last, in the 
great hall of the Castle of Berwick, the King gave judg- 
ment in favor of John Baliol : who, consenting to receive 
his crown by the King of England's favor and permission, 
was crowned at Scone, in an old stone chair which had 
been used for ages in the abbey there, at the coronations 
of Scottish Kings. Then, King Edward caused the great 
seal of Scotland, used since the late King's death, to be 
broken in four pieces, and placed in the English Treas- 
ury ; and considered that he now had Scotland (accord- 
ing to the common saying) under his thumb. 

Scotland had a strong will of its own yet, however. 
King Edward, determined that the Scottish King should 
not forget he was his vassal, summoned him repeatedly 
to come and defend himself and his Judges before the 
English Parliament when appeals from the decisions of 
Scottish courts of justice were being heard. At length, 
John Baliol, who had no great heart of his own, had so 
much heart put into him by the brave spirit of the Scot- 
tish people, who took this as a national insult, that he 
refused to come any more. Thereupon, the King further 
required him to help him in his war abroad (which was 
then in progress), and to give up, as security for his good 
behavior in future, the three strong Scottish Castles of Jed- 
burgh, Roxburgh, and Berwick. Nothing of this being 
done ; on the contrary, the Scottish people concealing their 
King among their mountains in the Highlands and show- 
ing a determination to resist ; Edward marched to Berwick 
with an army of thirty thousand foot, and four thousand 
horse; took the Castle, and slew its whole garrison, and 
the inhabitants of the town as well — men, women, and 
children. Lord Warrenne, Earl of Surrey, then went 
on to the Castle of Dunbar, before which a battle was 
fought, and the whole Scottish army defeated with £reat 
slaughter. The victory being complete, the Earl of 
Surrey was left as guardian of Scotland; the principal 
offices in that kingdom were given to Englishmen ; the 
more powerful Scottish Nobles were obliged to come and 
live in England; the Scottish cvcrwn and sceptre were 
brought away; and even the old stone chair was carried 
off and placed in Westminster Abbey, where you may 



A CHILD'S HISTOBY OF ENGLAND. 143 

see it now. Baliol had the Tower of London lent him 
for a residence with permission to range about within a 
circle of twenty miles. Three years afterwards he was 
allowed to go to Normandy, where he had estates, and 
where he passed the remaining six years of his life : far 
more happily, I dare say, than he had lived for along 
while in angry Scotland. 

Now, there was, in the West of Scotland, a gentleman 
of small fortune, named William Wallace, the secondt 
son of a Scottish knight. He was a man of great size 
and great strength; he was very brave and daring; 
when he spoke to a body of his countrymen, he could 
rouse them in a wonderful manner by the power of his 
burning words ; he loved Scotland dearly, and he hated 
England with his utmost might. The domineering con- 
duct of the English who now held the places of trust in 
Scotland made them as intolerable to the proud Scottish 
people, as they had been, under similar circumstances, to 
the Welsh ; and no man in all Scotland regarded them 
with so much smothered rage as William Wallace. One 
day, an Englishman in office, little knowing what he was, 
■affronted him. Wallace instantly struck him dead, and 
taking refuge among the rocks and hills, and there join- 
ing with his countryman, Sir William Douglas, who 
was also in arms against King Edward, became the most 
resolute and undaunted champion of a people struggling 
for their independence that ever lived upon the earth. 

The English Guardian of the Kingdom fled before him, 
and, thus encouraged, the Scottish people revolted every- 
where, and fell upon the English without mercy. The 
Earl of Surrey, by the King's commands, raised all the 
power of the Border-counties, and two English armies 
poured into Scotland. Only one Chief, in the face of 
those armies, stood by Wallace, who, with a force of forty 
thousand men, awaited the invaders at a place on the 
River Forth, within two miles of Stirling. Across the 
river there was only one poor wooden bridge, called the 
bridge of Kildean — so narrow, that but two men could 
cross it abreast. With his eyes upon this bridge, Wallace 
posted the greater part of his men among some rising 
grounds, and waited calmly. When the English army 
pame up on the opposite bank of the river, messengers 
were sent forward to offer terms, Wallace sent them 



144 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

back with a defiance, in the name of the freedom of Scot* 
land. Some of the officers of the Earl of Surrey in com- 
mand of the English, with their eyes also on the bridge, 
advised him to be discreet and not hasty. lie, however, 
urged to immediate battle by some other officers, and 
particularly by Cressingham, King Edward's treasurer, 
and a rash man, gave the word of command to advance. 
One thousand English crossed the bridge, two abreast; 
the Scottish troops were as motionless as stone images. 
Two thousand English crossed; three thousand, four 
thousand, five. Not a feather, all this time, had been 
seen to stir among the Scottish bonnets. Now, they all 
fluttered. "Forward, one party, to the foot of the 
Bridge! " cried Wallace, "and let no more English cross ! 
The rest, down with me on the five thousand who have 
come over, and cut them all to pieces ! " It was done, in 
the sight of the whole remainder of the English army, 
who could give no help. Cressingham himself was killed, 
and the Scotch made whips for their horses of his skin. 

King Edward was abroad at this time, and during the 
successes on the Scottish side which followed, and which 
enabled bold Wallace to win the whole country back 
again, and even to ravage the English borders. But, 
after a few winter months, the King returned, and took 
the field with more than his usual energy. One night, 
when a kick from his horse as they both lay on the 
ground together broke two of his ribs, and a cry arose 
that he was killed, he leaped into his saddle, regardless 
of the pain he suffered, and rode through the camp. Day 
then appearing, he gave the word (still, of course, in that 
bruised and aching state) Forward ! and led his army 
on to near Falkirk, where the Scottish forces were seen 
drawn up on some stony ground, behind a morass. Here, 
he defeated Wallace, and killed fifteen thousand of his 
men. With the shattered remainder, Wallace drew 
back to Stirling; but, being pursued, set fire to the town 
that it might give no help to the English, and escaped. 
The inhabitants of Perth afterwards set fire to their 
houses for the same reason, and the King, unable to find 
provisions, was forced to withdraw his army. 

Another Robert Bruce, the grandson of him who had 
disputed the Scottish crown with Baliol, was now in arms 
against the King (that elder Bruce being dead), and also 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 145 

John Comyn, Baliol's nephew. These two young men 
might agree with Brace in opposing Edward, but could 
agree in nothing else, as they were rivals for the throne 
of Scotland. Probably it was because they knew this and 
knew what troubles must arise even if they could hope to 
get the better of the great English King, that Che prin- 
cipal Scottish people applied to the Pope for his inter- 
feience. The Pope, on the priniciple of losing nothing 
for want of trying to get it, very coolly claimed that Scot- 
land belonged to him ; but this was a little too much, and 
the Parliament in a friendly manner told him so. 

In the spring-time of the year one thousand three hun- 
dred and three, the King-sent Sir John Segrave, whom 
he made Governor of Scotland, with twenty thousand 
men, to reduce the rebels. Sir John was not as careful as 
lie should have been, but encamped at Rosslyn, near Edin- 
burgh, with his army divided into three parts. The Scot- 
tish forces saw their advantage; fell on each part sepa- 
rately ; defeated each ; and killed all the prisoners. Then, 
came the King himself once more, as soon as a great army 
could be raised ; he passed through the whole north of 
Scotland, laying waste whatsoever came in his way; and 
he took up his winter quarters at Dnmfermline. The 
Scottish cause now looked so hopeless, that Comyn and 
the other nobles made submission and received their par- 
dons. Wallace alone stood out. He was invited to sur- 
render, though on no distinct pledge that his life should be 
spared ; but he still defied the ireful King, and lived among 
the steep crags of the Highland glens, where the eagles 
made their nests, and where the mountain torrents roared, 
and the white snow was (]ee\\ and the bitter winds blew 
round his unsheltered head, as he lay through many 
a pitch-dark night wrapped up in his plaid. Nothing 
could break his spirit; nothing could lower his courage: 
nothing could induce him to forget or to forgive his coun- 
try's wrongs. Even when the Castle of Stirling, which 
had long held out, was besieged by the King with every 
kind of military engine then in use; even when the lead 
upon cathedral roofs was taken down to help to make 
them ; even when the King, though now an old man, com- 
manded in the siege as if he were a youth, being so resolved 
to conquer; even when the brave garrison (then found 
with amazement to be not two hundred people, including 



146 A CHILD'S BISTORT OF ENGLAND. 

several ladies) were starved and beaten out and were made 
to submit on their knees, and with every form of disgrace 
that could aggravate their sufferings ; even then, when 
there was not a ray of hope in Scotland, William Wallace 
was as proud and firm as if he had beheld the powerful 
and relentless Edward lying dead at his feet. 

Who betrayed William Wallace in the end, is not 
quite certain. That he was betrayed — probably by an 
attendant — is too true. He was taken to the Castle of 
Dumbarton, under Sir John Menteith ; and thence to 
London, where the great fame of his bravery and resolu- 
tion attracted immense concourses of people, to behold 
him. He was tried in Westminster Hall, with a crown of 
laurel on his head — it is supposed because he was re- 
ported to have said that he ought to wear, or that he 
would wear, a crown there — and was found guilty as a 
robber, a murderer, and a traitor. What they called a 
robber (he said to those who tried him) he was, because 
he had taken spoil from the King's men. What they 
called a murderer, he was, because he had slain an insolent 
Englishman. What they called a traitor, he was not, for 
he had never sworn allegiance to the King, and had ever 
scorned to do it. He was dragged at the tails of horses 
to West Smithfield, and there hanged on a high gallows, 
torn open before he was dead, beheaded, and quartered, 
His head was set upon a pole on London Bridge, his right 
arm was sent to Newcastle, his left arm to Berwick, his 
legs to Perth and Aberdeen. But, if King Edward had 
had his body cut into inches, and had sent every separate 
inch into a separate town, he could not have dispersed it 
half so far and wide as his fame. Wallace will be re- 
membered in songs and stories ; while there are songs 
and stories in the English tongue, and Scotland will hold 
him dear while her lakes and mountains last. 

Released from this dreaded enemy, the King made a 
fairer plan of Government for Scotland, divided the offices 
of honor among Scottish gentlemen and English gentle- 
men, forgave past offences, arid thought, in his old age, 
that his work was done. 

But he deceived himself. Comyn and Bruce conspired, 
and made an appointment to meet at Dumfries, in the 
church of the Minorites. There is a story <;hat Comyn 
was false to Bruce, and had informed against him to the 



A CHIL&S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 14? 

King; that Bruce was warned of his danger and the 
necessity of flight, by receiving, one night as he sat at 
supper, from iiis friend the Earl of Gloucester, twelve 
pennies and a pair of spurs; that as he was riding an- 
grily to keep his appointment (through a snow-storm, with 
his horse's shoes reversed that he might not be tracked), 
he met an evil-looking serving-man, a messenger of 
Comyn, whom he killed, and concealed in whose dress he 
found letters that proved Comyn's treachery. How- 
ever this may be, they were likely enough to quarrel in 
any case, being hot-headed rivals ; and, whatever they 
quarrelled about, they certainly did quarrel in the church 
where they met, and Bruce drew his dagger and stabbed 
Comyn, who fell upon the pavement. When Bruce came 
out, pale and disturbed, the friends who were waiting for 
hm\ asked what was the matter. "I think I have killed 
Comyn," said he. " You only think so ? " returned one of 
them ; " I will make sure !" and going into the church, 
and finding him alive, stabbed him again and again. 
Knowing that the King would never forgive this new 
deed of violence, the party then declared Bruce King 
of Scotland: got him crowned at Scone — without the 
chair ; and set up the rebellious standard once again. 

When the King heard of it he kindled with fiercer 
anger than he had ever shown yet. He caused the Prince 
of Wales and two hundred and seventy of the young 
nobility to be knighted — the trees in the Temple Gardens 
were cut down to make room for their tents, and they 
watched their armor all night, according to the old usage: 
some in the Temple Church : some in Westminster 
Abbey — and at the public Feast which then took place, he 
swore, by Heaven, and by two swans covered with gold 
network which his minstrels placed upon the table, that 
he would the avenge the death of Comyn, and would 
punish the false Bruce. And before all the company, he 
charged the Prince his son, in case that he should die 
before accomplishing this vow, not to bury him until it 
was fulfilled. Nsxt morning the Prince and the rest of 
the young Knights rode away to the Border-country to 
join the English army ; and the King, now weak and 
I sick, followed in a horse-litter. 

Bruce, after losing a battle and undergoing many 
; dangers and much misery, fled to Ireland, where he lay 



148 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF MNGLAND. 

concealed through the winter. That winter Edward 
passed -in hunting down and executing Bnice's relations 
and adherents, sparing neither youth nor age, and show- 
ing no touch of pity or sign of mercy. In the following 
spring, Bruce reappeared and gained some victories. In 
these frays, both sides were grievously cruel. For instance 
— Bruce 1 s two brothers, being taken captives desperately 
wounded, were ordered by the King to instant execution. 
Bnice's friend Sir James Douglas, taking his own Castle of 
Douglas, out of the-hands of an English Lord, roasted the 
dead bodies of the slaughtered garrison in a great fire 
made of every movable within it; which dreadful cook- 
ery his men called the Douglas Larder. Bruce, still suc- 
cessful, however, drove the Earl of Pembroke and the 
Earl of Gloucester into the Castle of Ayr and laid siege 
to it. 

The King, who had been laid up all the winter, but had 
directed the army from his sick-bed, now advanced to Car- 
lisle, and there causing the litter in which he had travelled 
to be placed in the Cathedral as an offering to Heaven, 
mounted his horse once more, and for the last time. He 
was now sixty-nine years old, and had reigned thirty-five 
years. lie was so ill, that in four days lie could go no 
more than six miles; still, even at that pace, he went on 
and resolutely kept his face towards the Border. At 
length, he lay down at the village of Burgh-upon-Sands ; 
and there, telling those around him to impress upon the 
Prince that he was to remember his father's vow, and 
was never to rest until he had thoroughly subdued 
Scotland, he yielded up his last breath. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE SECOND. 

King Edward the Second, the first Prince of Wales, 
was twenty-three years old when his father died. 
There was a certain favorite of his, a young man from 
Gascon y, named Piers Gaveston, of whom his father 
had so much disapproved that he had ordered him out of 
gngland, and had made his son swear by the side of his 



A CHILD'S BISTORT OF ENGLAND. 14§ 

sick-bed, never to bring him back. But, the Prince no 
sooner found himself King, than he broke his oath, as so 
many other Princes and Kings did (they were far too 
ready to take oaths), and sent for his dear friend imme- 
diately. 

Now, this same Gaveston was handsome enough, but 
was a reckless, insolent, audacious fellow. He was de- 
tested by the proud English Lords : not only because lie 
had such power over the King and made the Court 
such a, dissipated place, but also, because he could ride 
better than they at tournaments, and was used, in his im- 
pudence, to cut very bad jokes on them; calling one, the 
old hog; another, the stage-player ; another, the Jew; an- 
other, the black dog of Ardenne. This was as poor 
wit as need be, but it made those Lords very wroth ; and 
the surly Earl of Warwick, who was the black dog, 
swore that the time should come when Piers Gaveston 
should feel the black dog's teeth. 

It was not come yet, however, nor did it seem to be 
coming. The King made him Earl of Cornwall, and gave 
him vast riches; and, when the King went over to France 
to marry the French Princess, Isabella, daughter of 
Philip le Bel: who was said to be the most beautiful 
woman in the world: he made Gaveston, Regentof the 
Kingdom. His splendid marriage-ceremony in the 
Church of Our Ladv of Boulogne, where there were four 
Kings and three Queens present (quite a pack of Court 
Cards, for I dare say the Knaves were not wanting), being 
over, lie seemed to care little or nothing for his beautiful 
wi fe ; but was wild with impatience to meet Gaveston 
again. 
"When he landed at home, he paid no attention to any- 
body else, but ran into the favorite's arms before a great 
concourse of people, and hugged him, and kissed him, and 
called him his brother. At the coronation which soon 
followed, Gaveston was the richest and brightest of all 
the flittering company there, and had the honor of carry- 
ing The crown. This made the proud Lords fiercer than 
ever; the people, too, despised the favorite, and would 
never call him Earl of Cornwall, however much he com- 
plained to the King and asked him to punish them for 
not doing so, but persisted in styling him plain Piers 
Gaveston. 



150 A CHILD'S BISTORT OF ENGLAND. 

The Barons were so unceremonious with the King in 
giving him to understand that they would not bear this 
favorite, that the King was obliged to send him out of the 
country. The favorite himself was made to take an 
oath (more oaths !) that he would never come back, and 
the Barons supposed him to be banished in disgrace, 
until they heard that he was appointed Governor of 
Ireland. Even this was not enough for the besotted 
King, who brought him home again in a year's time, and 
not only disgusted the Court and the people by his doting 
folly, but offended his beautiful wife too, who never 
liked him afterwards. 

He had now the old Royal want — of money — and the 
Barons had the new power of positively refusing to let 
him raise any. He summoned a Parliament at York ; the 
Barons refused to make one, while the favorite was near 
him. He summoned another Parliament at Westminster, 
and sent Gaveston away. Then the Barons came, com- 
pletely armed, and appointed a committee of themselves, 
to correct abuses in the state and in the King's house- 
hold. He got some money on these conditions, and 
directly set off with Gaveston to the Border-country, 
where they spent it in idling away the time, and feast- 
ing, while Bruce made ready to drive the English out of 
Scotland. For, though the old king had even made this 
poor weak son of his swear (as some say) that he would 
not bury his bones, but would have them boiled clean in 
a caldron, and carried before the English army until 
Scotland was entirely subdued, the second Edward was 
so unlike the first that Bruce gained strength and power 
every day. 

The committee of Nobles, after some months of delibera- 
tion, ordained that the King should henceforth call a Par- 
liament together, once every year, and even twice if neces- 
sary, instead of summoning it only when he chose. Fur- 
ther, that Gaveston should once more be banished, and, 
this time, on pain of death if he ever came back. The 
King's tears were of no avail ; he was obliged to send his 
favorite to Flanders. As soon as he had done so, how- 
ever, he dissolved the Parliament, with the low cunning of 
a mere fool, and set off to the North of England, thinking 
to get an army about him to oppose the Nobles. And 
once again he brought Gaveston home, and heaped upon 



A CBIL&8 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 151 

him all the riches and titles of which the Barons had de- 
prived him. 

The Lords saw, now, that there was nothing for it but 
to put the favorite to death. They could have done so 
legally, according to the terms of his banishment ; but 
they did so, I am sorry to say, in a shabby manner. Led by 
the Earl of Lancaster, the King's cousin, they first of all 
attacked the King and Gaveston at Newcastle. They had 
time to escape by sea, and the mean King, having his pre- 
cious Gaveston with him, was quite content to leave his 
lovely wife behind. When they were comparatively safe, 
they separated ; the king went to York to collect a force 
of soldiers ; and the favorite shut himself up, in the mean 
time, in Scarborough Castle overlooking the sea. This 
was what the Barons wanted. They knew that the Castle 
could not hold out; they attacked it and made Gaveston 
surrender. He delivered himself up to the Earl of Pem- 
broke — that Lord whom he had called the Jew — on the 
Earl's pledging his faith and knightly word, that no harm 
should happen to him and no violence be done to him. 

Now it was agreed with Gaveston that he should be 
taken to the Castle of Wallingford, and there kept in 
honorable custody. They travelled as far as Dedington, 
near Banbury, where, in the Castle of that place, they 
stopped for a night to rest. Whether the Earl of Pem- 
broke left his prisoner there, knowing what would hap- 
pen, or really left him thinking no harm, and only going 
(as he pretended) to visit his wife, the Countess, who was 
in the neighborhood, is no great matter now; in any case, 
he was bound, as an honorable gentleman to protect his 
prisoner, and did not do it. In the morning, while the 
favorite was yet in bed, he was required to dress himself 
and come down into the courtyard. He did so without 
any mistrust, but started and turned pale when he found 
it full of strange armed men. " I think you know me ? " 
said their leader, also armed from head to foot. "I am 
the black dog of Ardenne ! " 

The time was come when Piers Gaveston was to feel 
the black dog's teeth indeed. They set him on a mule, 
and carried him, in mock state and with military music, 
to the black dog's kennel — Warwick Castle — where a 
hasty council, composed of some great noblemen, con- 
sidered what should be done with him. Some were for 



152 A CHILD'S JSISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

sparing him, but one loud voice — it was the black dog's 
bark, I dure say— sounded through the Castle Hall utter- 
ing these words : " You have the fox in your power. Let 
him go now, and you must hunt him again." 

They sentenced him to death, lie threw himself at the 
feet of the Earl of Lancaster — the old hog — but the old 
hog was as savage as the dog. lie was taken out upon 
the pleasant road, leading from "Warwick to Coventry 
where the beautiful river Avon, by which, long after- 
wards, William Shakespeare was born and now lies 
buried, sparkled in the bright landscape of the beautiful 
May-day ; and there they struck off his wretched head, 
and stained the dust with his blood. 

When the King heard of this black deed, in his grief 
and rage he denounced relentless war against his Barons, 
and both sides were in arms for half a year. But, it then 
became necessary for them to join their forces against 
Bruce, who had used the time well while they were 
divided, and had now a great power in Scotland. 

Intelligence was brought that Bruce was then besieging 
Stirling Castle, and that the Governor had been obliged 
to pledge himself to surrender it, unless he should be re- 
lieved before a certain day. Hereupon, the King ordered 
the nobles and their fighting-men to meet him at Berwick; 
but, the nobles cared so lit-tle for the King, and so neg- 
lected the summons, and lost time, that only on the day 
before that appointment for the surrender, did the King 
find himself at Stirling, and even then with-a smaller force 
than he had expected. However, he had altogether, a 
hundred thousand men, and Bruce had not more than 
forty thousand ; but, Bruce's army was strongly posted in 
three square columns, on the ground lying between tha 
Burn or Brook of Bannock and the walls of Stirling Castle. 

On the very evening, when the King came up, Bruce 
did a brave act that encouraged his men. He was seen 
by a certain ITenry de Bohun, an English Knight, riding 
about, before his army on a little horse, with a light battle- 
axe in his hand, and a crown of gold on his bead. This 
English Knight, who was mounted on a strong war-horse, 
cased in steel, strongly armed, and able (as lie thought) to 
overthrow Bruce by crushing him with his mere weight, 
set spurs to his great charger, rode on him, and made a 
thrust at him with his heavy spear. Bruce parried the 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 153 

thrust, and with one blow of his battle-axe split his 
skull. 

The Scottish men did not forget this, next day when 
the battle raged. Randolph, Bruce's valiant nephew, 
rode, with the small body of men he commanded, into 
such a host of the English, all shining in polished armor 
in the sunlight, that they seemed to be swallowed up and 
lost, as if they had plunged into the sea. But, they 
fought so well, and did such dreadful execution, that 
the English staggered. Then came Bruce himself upon 
them, with all the rest of his army. While they were 
thus hard pressed and amazed, there appeared upon the 
hills what they supposed to be a new Scottish army, but 
what was really only the camp-followers, in number 
fifteen thousand : whom Bruce had taught to show them- 
selves at that place and time. The Eail of Gloucester, 
command ing t he English horse, made a last rush to change 
the fortune of the day ; but Bruce (like Jack the Giant- 
killer in the story) had had pits dug in the ground, and 
covered over with turfs and stakes. Into these, as they 
gave way beneath the weight of the horses, riders and 
horses rolled by hundreds. The English were completely 
routed ; all their treasure, stores, and engines, were taken 
by the Scottish men ; so many wagons and other wheeled 
vehicles were seized, that it is related that they would 
have reached, if they had been drawn out in a line, one 
hundred and eighty miles. The fortunes of Scotland 
Were, for the time, completely changed ; and never was 
a battle won, more famous upon Scottish ground, than 
this great battle of Bannookburn. 

Plague and famine succeeded in England ; and still the 
powerful King and his. disdainful Lords were always in 
contention. Some of the turbulent chiefs of Ireland made 
proposals to Bruce, to accept the rule of that country. 
He sent his brother Edward to them, who was crowned 
King of Ireland. TTe afterwards went himself to help his 
brother in his Irish wars, but his brother was defeated 
in the end and killed. Robert Bruce, returning to Scot- 
land, still increased his strength there. 

As the King's ruin had begun in a favorite, so it seemed 
likely to end in one. He was too poor a creatine to rely 
at all upon himself; and his new favorite was one Hugh 
lb Despexser, the son of a gentleman of an ancient 



154 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

family. Hugh was handsome and brave, but he was the 
favorite of a weak King, whom no man cared a rush for, 
and that was a dangerous place to hold. The Nobles 
leagued against him, because the King liked him ; and 
they lay in wait both for his ruin and his father's. Now, 
the King had married him to the daughter of the late 
Earl of Gloucester, and had given both him and his father 
great possessions in Wales. In their endeavors to extend 
these, they gave violent offence to an angry Welsh gentle- 
man, named John de Mowbray and to divers other angry 
Welsh gentlemen, who resorted to arms, took their 
castles, and seized their estates. The Earl of Lancaster 
had first placed the favorite (who was a poor relation of 
his own) at Court, and he considered his own dignity 
offended by the preference he received and the honors he 
acquired ; so he, and the Barons who were his friends, 
joined the Welshmen, marched on London, and sent a 
message to the King demanding to have the favorite and 
his father banished. At first, the King unaccountably 
took it into his head to be spirited, and to send them a 
bold reply ; but when they quartered themselves around 
Holborn and Clerkenwell, and went down, armed, to the 
Parliament at Westminster, he gave way, and complied 
with their demands. 

His turn of triumph came sooner than he expected. It 
arose out of an accidental circumstance. The beautiful 
Queen happening to be travelling, came one night to one 
of the royal castles, and demanded to be lodged and en- 
tertained there until morning. The governor of this 
castle, who was one of the enraged lords, was away, 
and in his absence, his wife refused admission to the 
Queen; a scuffle took place among the common men on 
either side, and some of the royal attendants were killed. 
The people, who cared nothing for the King, were very 
angry that their beautiful Queen should be thus rudely 
treated in her own dominions ; and the King, taking 
advantage of this feeling, besieged the castle, took it, and 
then called the two Despensers home. Upon this, the 
confederate lords and the Welshmen went over to Bruce. 
The King encountered them at Boroughbridge, gained 
the victory, and took a number of distinguished prison- 
ers ; among them, the Earl of Lancaster, now an old man, 
upon whose destruction he was resolved. This Earl was 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 155 

taken to his own castle of Pontef ract, and there tried and 
found guilty by an unfair court appointed for the purpose ; 
he was not even allowed to speak in his own defence. 
He was insulted, pelted, mounted on a starved pony with- 
out saddle or bridle, carried out, and beheaded. Eight and 
twenty knights were hanged, drawn, and quartered. 
When the King had despatched this bloody work, and 
had made a fresh and a long truce with Bruce, he took 
the Despensers into greater favor than ever, and made 
the father Earl of Winchester. 

One prisoner, and an important one, who was taken at 
Borough bridge, made his escape, however, and turned the 
tide against the King. This was Roger Mortimer, 
always resolutely opposed to him, who was sentenced to 
death, and placed for safe custody in the Tower of London. 
He treated his guards to a quantity of wine into which 
he had put a sleeping potion ; and, when they were insen- 
sible, broke out of his dungeon, got into a kitchen, climbed 
up the chimney, let himself down from the roof of the 
building with a rope ladder, passed the sentries, got down 
to the river, and made away in a boat to where servants 
and horses were waiting for him. He finally escaped to 
France, where Charles le Bel, the brother of the beau- 
tiful Queen, was King. Charles sought to quarrel with 
the King of England, on pretence of his not having come 
to do him homage at his coronation. It was proposed 
that the beautiful Queen should go over to arrange the 
dispute ; she went, and wrote home to the King, that as 
he was sick and could not come to France himself, per- 
haps it would be better to send over the young Prince, 
their son, who was only twelve years old, who could do 
homage to her brother in his stead, and in whose company 
she would immediately return. The King sent him': 
pit, both he and the Queen remained at the French 
Court, and Roger Mortimer became the Queen's lover. 

When the King wrote, again and again, to the Queen 
to come home, she did not reply that she despised him 
too much to live with him any more (which was the 
truth), but said she was afraid of the two Despensers. 
In short, her design was to overthrow the favorites' 
power, and the King's power, such as it was, and invade 
England. Having obtained a French force of two thou- 
sand men, and being joined by all the English exiles then 



156 A CHILD'S HISTOBY OF ENGLAND. 

In France, she landed, within a year, at Orewell, in 
Suffolk, where she was immediately joined by the Earls 
of Kent and Norfolk, the King's two brothers ; by other 
powerful noblemen; and lastly, by the first English 
general who w r as despatched to check her: who went 
over to her with all his men. The people of London, re- 
ceiving these tidings, would do nothing for the King, but 
broke open the Tower, let out all his prisoners, and 
threw, up their caps and hurrahed for the beautiful 
Queen. 

The King, with his two favorites, fled to Bristol, where 
he left old Despenser in charge of the town and castle, 
while he went on with the son to Wales. The Bristol 
men being opposed to the King, and it being impossible 
to hold the town with enemies everywhere within the 
walls, Despenser yielded it up on the third day, and was 
instantly brought to trial for having traitorously in- 
fluenced what was called " the King's mind " — though I 
doubt if the King ever had any. He was a venerable old 
man, upwards of ninety years of age, but his age gained 
no respect or mercy. He was hanged, torn open while 
he was yet alive, cut up into pieces, and thrown to the 
dogs. His son was soon taken, tried at Hereford before 
the same judge on a long series of foolish charges, found 
guilty, and hanged upon a gallows fifty feet high, with a 
chapiet of nettles round his head. His poor old father 
and he were innocent of any worse crimes than the crime 
of having been the friends of a King, on whom, as a mere 
man, they would never have deigned to cast a favorable 
look. It is a bad crime, I know, and leads to worse; 
but, many lords and gentlemen — I even think some ladies, 
too, if I recollect right — have committed it in England, 
who have neither been given to the dogs, nor hanged up 
fifty feet high. 

The wretched King was running here and there, all 
this time, and never getting anywhere in particular, 
until he gave himself up, and was taken off to Kenilworth 
Castle. When he was safely lodged there, the Queen 
went to London and met. the Parliament. And the Bishop 
of Hereford, who was the most skilful of her friends, 
said, What was to be done now? Here was an. imbecile, 
indolent, miserable King upon the throne; wouldn't it 
be better to take him off, and put his sen there instead? 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 157 

I don't know whether the Queen really pitied him at 
this pass, but she began to cry ; so, the Bishop said, Well, 
my Lords and Gentlemen, what do you think, upon the 
whole, of sending down to Kenilworth, and seeing if His 
Majesty (God bless him, and forbid we should depose 
him !) won't resign ? 

My Lords and Gentlemen thought it a good notion, so 
a deputation of them went down to Kenilworth ; and 
there the King came into the great hall of the Castle, 
commonly dressed in a poor black gown ; and when he 
saw a certain bishop among them, fell down, poor feeble- 
headed man, and made a wretched spectacle of himself. 
Somebody lifted him up, and then Sir William Trussel, 
the Speaker of the House of Commons, almost frightened 
him to death by making him a tremendous speech to the 
effect that he was no longer a King, and that everybody 
renounced allegiance to him. After which, Sir Thomas 
Blount, the Steward of the Household, nearly finished 
him, by coming forward and breaking his white wand — 
which was a ceremony only performed at a King's death. 
Being asked in this pressing manner what he thought of 
resigning, the King said he thought it was the best- thing 
he could do. So, he did it, and they proclaimed his son 
next day. 

I wish I could close his history by saying that he lived 
a harmless life in the Castle and the Castle gardens at 
Kenilworth many years — that he had a favorite, and 
plenty to eat and drink— and, having that, wanted noth- 
ing. But he was shamefully humiliated. He was out- 
raged, and slighted, and had dirty water from ditches 
given him to shave with, and wept and said he would 
have clean warm water, and was altogether very misera- 
ble. He was moved from this castle to that castle, and 
from that castle to the other castle, because this lord or 
that lord, or the other lord, was too kind to him ; until 
at last lie came to Berkeley Castle, near the River Severn, 
where (the Lord Berkeley being then ill and absent) he 
fell into the hands of two black ruffians, called Thomas 
Gournay and William Ogle. 

One night — it was the night of September the twenty- 
first, one thousand three hundred and twenty-seven — 
dreadful screams were heard, by the startled people in 
the neighboring town, ringing through the thick walls of 



158 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

the Castle, and the dark deep night ; and they said, as 
they were thus horribly awakened from their sleep, " May 
Heaven be merciful to the King; for those cries forbode 
that no good is being done to him in his dismal prison ! " 
Next morning he was dead — not bruised, or stabbed, or 
marked upon the body, but much distorted in the face ; 
and it was whispered afterwards, that those two villains, 
Gournay and Ogle, had burnt up his inside with a red-hot 
iron. 

If you ever come near Gloucester, and see the centre 
tower of its beautiful Cathedral, with its four rich pin- 
nacles rising lightly in the air ; you may remember that 
the wretched Edward the Second was buried in the old 
abbey of that ancient city, at forty-three years old, after 
being for nineteen years and a half a perfectly incapable 
King. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE THIRD. 

Roger Mortimer, the Queen's lover (who escaped to 
France in the last chapter), was far from profiting by the 
examples he had had of the fate of favorites. Having, 
through the Queen's influence, come into possession of 
the estates of the two Despensers, he became extremely 
proud and ambitious, and sought to be the real ruler of 
England. The young King, who was crowned at fourteen 
years of age with all the usual solemnities, resolved not 
to bear this, and soon pursued Mortimer to his ruin. 

The people themselves were not fond of Mortimer- 
first, because he was a Royal favorite ; secondly, because 
he was supposed to have helped to make a peace with 
Scotland which now took place, and in virtue of which 
the young King's sister Joan, only seven years old, was 
promised in marriage to David, the son and heir of 
Robert Bruce, who was only five years old. The nobles 
hated Mortimer because of his pride, riches, and power. 
They went so far as to take up arms against him ; but 
were obliged to submit. The Earl of Kent, one of those 
who did so, but who afterwards went over to Mortimer 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 159 

and the Queen, was made an example of in the following 
cruel manner : — 

He seems to have been anything but a wise old earl ; 
and he was persuaded by the agents of the favorite and 
the Queen, that poor King Edward the Second was not 
really dead ; and thus was betrayed into writing letters 
favoring his rightful claim to the throne. This was 
made out to be high treason, and he was tried, found 
guilty, and sentenced to be executed. They took the 
poor old lord outside the town of Winchester, and there 
kept him waiting some three or four hours until they could 
find somebody to cut off his head. At last, a convict said 
he would do it, if the government would pardon him 
in return ; and they gave him the pardon ; and at one 
blow he put the Earl of Kent out of his last suspense. 

While the Queen was in France, she had found a 
lovely and good young lady, named Philippa, who she 
thought would make an excellent wife for her son. The 
young King married this lady, soon after he came to the 
throne ; and her first child, Edward, Prince of Wales, 
afterwards became celebrated, as we shall presently see, 
under the famous title of Edward the Black Peince. 

The young King, thinking the time ripe for the down- 
fall of Mortimer, took counsel with Lord Montacute how 
he should proceed. A Parliament was going to be held 
at Nottingham, and that lord recommended that the 
favorite should be seized by night in Nottingham Castle, 
where he was sure to be. Now, this, like many other 
things, was more easily said than done ; because, to 
guard against treachery, the great gates of the Castle 
were locked every night, and the great keys were carried 
upstairs to the Queen, who laid them under her own 
pillow. But the Castle had a governor, and, the gover- 
nor being Lord Montacute's friend, confided to him how 
he knew of a secret passage underground, hidden from 
observation by the weeds and brambles with which it was 
overgrown ; and how, through that passage, the con- 
spirators might enter hi the dead of the night, and go 
straight to Mortimer's room. Accordingly, upon a certain 
dark night, at midnight, they made their way through 
this dismal place : startling the rats, and frightening the 
©wis and bats ; and came safely to the bottom of the 
main tower of the Castle, where the King met then^ and 



160 A CHILD'S HISTOBT OF ENGLAND. 

took them up a profoundly dark staircase in a deep 
silence. They soon heard the voice of Mortimer in council 
with some friends; and bursting into the room with a 
sudden noise, took him prisoner. The Queen cried out 
from her bed-chamber: "Oh, my sweet son, my dear 
son, spare my gentle Mortimer!" They carried him off, 
however; and, before the next Parliament, accused him 
of having made differences between the young King and 
his mother, and of having brought about the death of the 
Earl of Kent, and even of the late King; for, as you know 
by this time, when they wanted to get rid of a man in 
those old days, they were not very particular of what 
they accused him. Mortimer was found guilty of all this, 
and was sentenced to be hanged at Tyburn. The King 
shut his mother up in genteel confinement, where she 
passed the rest of her life ; and now he became King in 
earnest. 

The first effort he made was to conquer Scotland. The 
English lords who had lands in Scotland, finding that 
their rights were not respected under the late peace, made 
war on their own account: choosing for their general, 
Edward, the son of John Baliol, who made such a vigorous 
fight, that in less than two months he won the whole 
Scottish Kingdom. He was joined, when thus trium- 
phant, by the King and Parliament ; and he and the King 
in person besieged the Scottish forces in Berwick. The 
whole Scottish army coming to the assistance of their 
countrymen, such a furious battle ensued, that thirty- 
thousand men are said to have been killed in it. Baliol 
was then crowned King of Scotland, doing homage to the 
King of England; but little came of his successes after 
all, for the Scottish men rose against him, within no very 
long time, and David Bruce came back within ten years 
and took his kingdom. 

France was afar richer country than Scotland, and the 
King had a much greater mind to conquer it. So, lie let 
Scotland alone, and pretended that he had a claim to the 
French throne in right of his mother. He had, in reality, 
no claim at all ; but that mattered little in those times. 
He brought over to his cause many little princes and 
sovereigns, and even courted the alliance of the people 
of Flanders — a busy, working community, who had very 
small respect for kings, and whose head man was a brewer. 



A CHILD'S BISTORT OF ENGLAND. 161 

With such forces as he raised by these means, Edward 
invaded France; but he did little by that, except run into 
debt in carrying on the war, to the extent of three hun- 
dred thousand pounds. The next year he did better ; 
gaining a great sea-fight in the harbor of Sluys. This 
success, however, was very short-lived, for the Flemings 
took fright at the siege of Saint Omer and ran away, 
leaving their weapons and baggage behind them. Philip, 
the French King, coming up with his army, and Edward 
being very anxious to decide the war, proposed to settle 
the difference by single combat with him, or by a fight 
of one hundred knights on each side. The French King 
said, he thanked him ; but being very well as he was, he 
would rather not. So, after some skirmishing and talk- 
ing, a short peace was made. 

It was soon broken by King Edward's favoring the 
cause of John, Earl of Montford ; a French nobleman, 
who asserted a claim of his own against the French King, 
and offered to do homage to England for the Crown of 
France, if he could obtain it through England's help. 
This French lord, himself, was soon defeated by the 
French King's son, and shut up in a tower in Paris ; but 
his wife, a courageous and beautiful woman, who is said 
to have had the courage of a man, and the heart of a lion, 
assembled the people of Brittany, where she, then was; 
and, showing them her infant son, made many pathetic 
entreaties to them not to desert her and their young Lord. 
They took fire at this appeal, and rallied round her in the 
strong castle of Hennebon. Here she. was not only be- 
sieged without by the French under Charles de Blois, 
but was endangered within by a dreary old bishop, who 
was always representing to the people what horrors they 
must undergo if they were faithful — first from famine, 
and afterwards from fire and sword. But this noble lady, 
whose heart never failed her, encouraged her soldiers by 
her own example; went from post to post like a great 
general; even mounted on horseback fully armed, and, 
issuing from the castle by a by-path, fell upon the French 
camp, set fire to the tents, and threw the whole force into 
disorder. This done, she got safely back to Hennebon 
again, and was received with loud shouts of joy by the 
defenders of the castle, who had given her up for lost. 
As they were now very short of provisions, however, and 
ii 



162 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

as they could not dine off enthusiasm, and as the old 
bishop was always saying, " I told you what it would 
come to ! " they began to lose heart, and to talk of yield- 
ing the castle up. The brave Countess retiring to an 
upper room and looking with great grief out to sea, where 
she expected relief from England, saw, at this very time, 
the English ships in the distance, and was relieved and 
rescued ! Sir Walter Manning, the English commander, 
so admired her courage, that, being come into the castle 
with the English knights, and having made a feast there, 
he assaulted the French by way of dessert, and beat diem 
off triumphantly. Then he and the knights came back 
to the castle with great joy; and the Countess, who had 
watched them from a high tower, thanked them with all 
her heart, and kissed them every one. 

This noble lady distinguished herself afterwards in a 
sea-fight with the French off Guernsey, when she was on 
her way to England to ask for more troops. Her great 
spirit roused another lady, the wife of another French 
lord (whom the French King very barbarously murdered), 
to distinguish herself scarcely less. The time was fast 
coming, however, when Edward, Prince of Wales, was to 
be the great star of this French and English war. 

" It was in the month of July, in the year one thousand 
three hundred and forty-six, when the King embarked at 
Southampton for France, with an army of about thirty 
thousand men in all, attended by the Prince of Wales and 
by several of the chief nobles. He landed at La Hogue 
in Normandy ; and, burning and destroying as he went, 
according to custom, advanced up the left bank of the 
River Seine, and fired the small towns even close to Paris ; 
but, being watched from the right bank of the river by 
the French King and all his army, it came to this at last, 
that Edward found himself, on Saturday the twenty-sixth 
of August, one thousand three hundred and forty-six, on 
a rising ground behind the little French village of Crecy, 
face to face with the French King's force. And, although 
the French King had an enormous army — in number 
more than eight times his — he there resolved to beat him 
or be beaten. 

The young Prince, assisted by the Earl of Oxford and 
the Earl of Warwick, led the first division of the English 
army ; two other great Earls led the second ; and the King, 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 163 

the third. When the morning dawned, the King re* 
ceived the sacrament, and heard prayers, and then, 
mounted on horseback with a white wand in his hand, 
rode from company to company, and rank to rank, cheer- 
ing and encouraging both officers and men. Then the 
whole army breakfasted, each man sitting on the ground 
where he had stood ; and then they remained quietly on 
the ground with their weapons ready. 

Up came the French King with all his great force. It 
was dark and angry weather ; there was an eclipse of the 
sun ; there was a thunder-storm, accompanied with tre- 
mendous rain ; the frightened birds flew screaming above 
the soldiers' heads. A certain captain in the French army 
advised the French King, who was by no means cheerful, 
not to begin the battle until the morrow. The King, 
taking this advice, gave the word to halt. But, those be- 
hind not understanding it, or desiring to be foremost 
with the rest, came pressing on. The roads for a great 
distance were covered with this immense army, and with 
the common people from the villages, who were flourish- 
ing their rude weapons, and making a great noise. Owing 
to these circumstances, the French army advanced in 
the greatest confusion ; every French lord doing what he 
liked with his own men, and putting out the men of every 
other French lord. 

Now, their King relied strongly upon a great body of 
cross-bowmen from Genoa ; and these he ordered to the 
front to begin the battle, on finding that he could not 
stop it. They shouted once, they shouted twice, they 
shouted three times, to alarm the English archers; but, 
the English archers would have heard them shout three 
thousand times and would have never moved. At last 
the cross-bowmen went forward a little, and began to dis- 
charge their bolts ; upon which, the English let fly such 
a hail of arrows, that the Genoese speedily made off — for 
their cross-bows, besides being too heavy to carry, required 
to be wound up with a handle, and consequently took 
time to reload:/ the English, on the other hand, could dis- 
charge their arrows almost as fast as the arrows could 

fly. 

When the French King saw the Genoese, turning, he 
cried out to his men to kill those scoundrels, who were 
doing harm instead of service. This increased the con- 



164 A CHILES HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

fusion. Meanwhile the English archers, continuing to 
shoot as fast as ever, shot down great numbers of the 
French soldiers and knights ; whom certain sly Cornish- 
men and Welshmen, from the English army, creeping 
along the ground, despatched with great knives. 

The Prince and his division were at this time so hard- 
pressed, that the Earl of Warwick sent a message to the 
King, who was overlooking the battle from a windmill, 
beseeching him to send more aid. 

" Is my son killed?" said the King. 

"No, sire, please God," returned the messenger. 

" Is he wounded ? " said the King. 

" No, sire." 

"Is he thrown to the ground?" said the King. 

"No, sire, not so; but, he is very hard-pressed." 

"Then," said the King, "go back to those who sent you, 
and tell them I shall send no aid ; because I set my heart 
upon my son proving himself this day a brave knight, and 
because I am resolved, please God, that the honor of a 
great victory shall be his!" 

These bold words, being reported to the Prince and his 
division, so raised their spirits, that they fought better than 
ever. The King of France charged gallantly with his men 
many times ; but it was of no use. Night closing in, his 
horse was killed under him by an English arrow, and the 
knights and nobles who had clustered thick about him 
early in the day, were now completely scattered. At last, 
some of his few remaining followers led him off the field 
by force, since he would not retire of himself, and they 
journeyed away to Amiens. The victorious English, light- 
ing their watch-fires, made merry on the field, and the 
King, riding to meet his gallant son, took him in his arms, 
kissed him, and told him that he had acted nobly, and 
proved himself worthy of the day and of the crown. While 
it was yet night, King Edward was hardly aware of the 
great victory he had gained; but, next day, it was dis- 
covered that eleven princes, twelve hundred knights, and 
thirty thousand common men lay dead upon the French 
side. Among these was the King of Bohemia, an old blind 
man ; who, having been told that his son was wounded 
in the battle, and that no force could stand against the 
Black Prince, called to him two knights, put himself on 
horseback between them, fastened the three bridles to- 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND, 165 

gether, and dashed in among the English, where he was 
presently slain. He bore as his crest three white ostrich 
feathers, with the motto Jch Dien, signifying in English 
" I serve." This crest and motto were taken by the Prince 
of Wales in remembrance of that famous day, and have 
been borne by the Prince of Wales ever since. 

Five days after this great battle, the King laid siege to 
Calais. This siege— ever afterwards memorable— lasted 
nearly a year. In order to starve the inhabitants out, 
King Edward built so many wooden houses for the lodg- 
ings of his troops, that it is said their quarters looked 
like a second Calais suddenly sprung up around the first. 
Early in the siege, the governor of the town drove out what 
he called the useless mouths, to the number of seventeen 
hundred persons, men and women, young and old. King 
Edward allowed them to pass through his lines, and even 
fed them, and dismissed them with money; but, later in 
the siege, he was not so merciful — five hundred more, who 
were afterwards driven out, dying of starvation and misery. 
The garrison were so hard-pressed at last, that they sent a 
letter to King Philip, telling him that they had eaten all 
the horses, all the dogs, and all the rats and mice that 
could be found in the place; and, that if he did not re- 
lieve them, they must either surrender to the English, or 
eat one another. Philip made cue effort to give them re- 
lief ; but they were so hemmed in by the English power, 
that he could not succeed, and was fain to leave the place. 
Upon this they hoisted the English flag, and surrendered 
to King Edward. "Tell your general," said he to the 
humble messengers who came out of the town, " that I 
require to have sent here six of the most distinguished 
citizens, bare-legged, and in their shirts, with ropes about 
their necks ; and let those six men bring with them the 
keys of the castle and the town." 

When the Governor of Calais related this to the people 
in the Market-place, there was great weeping and dis- 
tress; in the midst of which, one worthy citizen, named 
Eustace de Saint Pierre, rose up and said, that if the six 
men required were not sacrificed, the whole population 
would be; therefore, he offered himself as the first. En- 
couraged by this bright example, five other worthy citi- 
zens rose up one after another, and offered themselves to 
save the rest. The Governor, who was too badly wounded 



166 A CHILD'S H1ST0BY OF ENGLAND. 

to be able to walk, mounted a poor old horse that had not 
been eaten, and conducted these good men to the gate, 
while all the people cried and mourned. 

Edward received them wrathfulty, and ordered the 
heads of the whole six to be struck off. However, the 
good Queen fell upon her knees, and besought the King 
to give them up to her. The King replied, " I wish you 
had been somewhere else ; but I cannot refuse you." So 
she had them properly dressed, made a feast for them, 
and sent them back with a handsome present, to the 
great rejoicing of the whole camp. I hope the people of 
Calais loved the daughter to whom she gave birth soon 
afterwards, for her gentle mother's sake. 

Now, came that terrible disease, the Plague, into 
Europe, hurrying from the heart of China; and killed 
the wretched people — especially the poor — in such enor- 
mous numbers, that one half of the inhabitants of Eng- 
land are related to have died of it. It killed the cattle, 
in great numbers, too ; and so few workingmen remained 
alive, that there were not enough left to till the ground. 

After eight years of differing and quarrelling, the 
Prince of Wales again invaded France with an army of 
sixty thousand men. He went through the south of the 
country, burning and plundering wheresoever he went ; 
while his father who had still the Scottish war upon his 
hands, did the like in Scotland, but was harassed and 
worried in his retreat from that country by the Scottish 
men, who repaid his cruelties with interest. 

The French King, Philip, was now dead, and was suc- 
ceeded by his son John. The Black Prince, called by 
that name from the color of the armor he wore to set off 
his fair complexion, continuing to burn and destroy in 
France, roused John into determined opposition ; and so 
cruel had the Black Prince been in his campaign, and so 
severely had the French peasants suffered, that he could 
not find one who, for love, or money, or the fear of death, 
would tell him what the French King was doing, or 
where he was. Thus it happened that he came upon the 
French King's forces, all of a sudden near the town of 
Poitiers, and found that the whole neighboring country 
was occupied by a vast French army. " God help us ! " 
said the Black Prince, " we must make the best of it." 

So, on a Sunday morning, the eighteenth of September, 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 167 

the Prince — whose army was now reduced to ten thou- 
sand men in all— prepared to give battle to the French 
King, who had sixty thousand horse alone. While he 
was so engaged, there came riding from the French camp 
a Cardinal, who had persuaded John to let him offer 
terms, and try to save the shedding of Christian blood. 
" Save my honor," said the Prince to this good priest, 
" and save the honor of my army, and I will make any 
reasonable terms." He offered to give up all the towns, 
castles, and prisoners, he had taken, and to swear to 
make no war in France for seven years ; but, as John 
would hear of nothing but his surrender, with a hundred 
of his chief knights, the treaty was broken off, and the 
Prince said quietly — "God defend the right; we shall 
fight to-morrow." 

Therefore, on the Monday morning, at break of day, 
the two armies prepared for battle. The English were 
posted in a strong place, which could only be approached 
by one narrow lane, skirted by hedges on both sides. 
The French attacked them by this lane ; but were so 
galled and slain by English arrows from behind the 
hedges, that they were forced to retreat. Then, went six 
hundred English bowmen round about, and, coming upon 
the rear of the French army, rained arrows on them thick 
and fast. The French knights, thrown into confusion, 
quitted their banners and dispersed in all directions. Said 
Sir John Chandos to the Prince, " Ride forward, noble 
Prince, and the day is yours. The King of France is so 
valiant a gentleman, that I know he will never fly, and 
may be taken prisoner." Said the Prince to this, " Ad- 
vance English banners, in the name of God and St. 
George ! " and on they pressed until they came up with 
the French King, fighting fiercely with his battle-axe, 
and, when all his nobles had forsaken him, attended faith- 
fully to the last by his youngest son Philip, only sixteen 
years of age. Father and son fought well, and the King 
had already two wounds in his face, and had been beaten 
down, when he at last delivered himself to a banished 
French knight, and gave him his right-hand glove in 
token that he had done so. 

The Black Prince was generous as well as brave, and 
he invited his royal prisoner to supper in his tent, and 
waited upon him at table, and, when they afterwards 



108 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

rode into London in a gorgeous procession, mounted the 
-French King on a tine cream-colored horse, and rode at his 
side on a little pony. This was all very kind, but I think 
it was, perhaps, a little theatrical too, and has been made 
more meritorious than it deserved to be; especially as I 
am inclined to think that the greatest kindness to the 
King of France would have been not to have shown him 
to the people at all. However, it must be said, for these 
acts of politeness, that, in course of time, they did much 
to soften the horrors of war and the passions of conquer- 
ors. It was a long, long time before the common soldiers 
began to have the benefit of such courtly deeds; but 
they did at last ; and thus it is possible that a poor 
soldier who asked for quarter at the battle of Waterloo, 
or any other such great fight, may have owed his life 
indirectly to Edward the Black Prince. 

At this time there stood in the Strand, in London, a 
palace called the Savoy, which was given up to the captive 
King of France and his son for their residence. As the 
King of Scotland had now been King Edward's captive 
for eleven years too, his success was, at this time, toler- 
ably complete. The Scottish business was settled by the 
prisoner being released under the title of Sir Edward, 
King of Scotland, and by his engaging to pay a large 
ransom. The state of France encouraged England to 
propose harder terms to that country, where the people 
rose against the unspeakable cruelty and barbarity of its 
nobles ; where the nobles rose in turn against the people ; 
where the most frightful outrages were committed on all 
sides; and where the insurrection of the peasants, called 
the insurrection of the Jacquerie, from Jacques, a common 
Christian name among the country people of France, 
awakened terrors and hatreds that have scarcely yet 
passed away. A treaty called the Great Peace, was at 
last signed, under which King Edward agreed to give up 
the greater part of his conquests, and King John to pay, 
within six years, a ransom of three million crowns of gold. 
He was so beset by his own nobles and courtiers for hav- 
ing yielded to these conditions — though' they could help 
him to no better — that he came back of his own will 
to his old palace prison of the Savoy, and there died. 

There was a Sovereign of Castile at that time, called 
Pepbg the Ceuel, who deserved the name remarkably 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 169 

well : having committed, among other cruelties a variety 
of murders. This amiable monarch being driven from 
his throne for his crimes, went to the province of Bor- 
deaux, where the Black Prince — now married to his cousin 
Joan, a pretty widow — was residing, and besought his 
help. The Prince, who took to him much more kindly 
than a prince of such fame ought- to have t;iken to such a 
ruffian, readily listened to his fair promises, and agreeing 
to help him, sent secret orders to some troublesome dis- 
banded soldiers of his and his father's, who called them- 
selves the Free Companions, and who had been a pest to 
the French people, for some time, to aid this Pedro. The 
Prince, himself, going into Spain to head the army of 
relief, soon set Pedro on his throne again — where he no 
sooner found himself, than, of course, he behaved like the 
villain he was, broke his word without the least shame, 
and abandoned all the promises he had made to the Black 
Prince. 

Now, it had cost the Prince a good deal of money to 
pay soldiers to support this murderous King ; and finding 
himself, when he came back disgusted to Bordeaux, not 
only in bad health, but deeply in debt, he began to tax his 
French subjects to pay his creditors. They appealed 
to the French King, Charles; war again broke out; and 
the French town of Limoges, whirh the Prince had gT-eatly 
benefited, went over to the Frerfc King. Upon this he 
ravaged the province of which it was the capital ; burnt, 
and plundered, and killed in the old sickening way ; and 
refused mercy to the prisoners, men, women, and chil- 
dren, taken in the offending town, though he was so ill 
and so much in need of pity himself from Heaven, that 
he was carried in a litter. He lived to come home and 
make himself popular with the people and Parliament, 
and he died on Trinity Sunday, the eighth of June, one 
thousand three hundred and seventy-six, at forty-six 
years old. 

The whole nation mourned for him as one of the most 
renowned and beloved princes it had ever had; and he 
was buried with great lamentations in Canterbury 
Cathedral. Near to the tomb of Edward the Confessor, 
his monument, with his figure carved in stone, and rep- 
resented in the old black armor, lying on its back, may 
be seen at this day, with an ancient coat of mail, a helmet. 



170 A CHILD'S HISTOBY OF ENGLAND. 

and a pair of gauntlets hanging from a beam above it, 
which most people like to believe were once worn by the 
Black Prince. 

King Edward did not outlive his renowned son, long. 
He was old, and one Alice Ferrers, a beautiful lady, had 
contrived to make him so fond of her in his old age, that 
he could refuse her nothing, and made himself ridiculous. 
She little deserved his love, or — what I dare say she 
valued a great deal more — the jewels of the late Queen, 
which he gave her among other rich presents. She took 
the very ring from his finger on the morning of the day 
when he died, and left him to be pillaged by his faithless 
servants. Only one good priest was true to him, and at- 
tended him to the last. 

Besides being famous for the great victories I have re- 
lated, the reign of King Edward the Third was rendered 
memorable in better ways, by the growth of architecture 
and the erection of Windsor Castle. In better ways 
still, by the rising up of Wickliffe, originally a poor 
parish priest: who devoted himself to exposing, with 
wonderful power and success, the ambition and cor- 
ruption of the Pope, and of the whole church of which, he 
was the head. 

Some of those Flemings were induced to come to Eng- 
land in this reign too, and to settle in Norfolk, where 
they made better woollen cloths than the English had 
ever had before. The Order of the Garter (a very fine 
thing in its way, but hardly so important as good clothes 
for the nation) also dates from this period. The King is 
said to have picked up a lady's garter at a ball, and to 
have said, Honi soit qui mal y pense — in English, "Evil 
be to him who evil thinks of it." The courtiers were 
usually glad to imitate what the king said or did, and 
hence from a slight incident the Order of the Garter was 
instituted, and became a great dignity. So the story 
goes. 



A CHILD'S H1ST0EY OF ENGLAND. 171 

CHAPTER XIX. 

ENGLAND UNDER RICHARD THE SECOND. 

Richard, son of the Black Prince, a boy of eleven years 
of age, succeeded to the Crown under the title of King 
Richard the Second. The whole English nation were 
ready to admire him for the sake of his brave father. 
As to the lords and ladies about the Court, they declared 
him to be the most beautiful, the wisest, and the best — 
even of princes — whom the lords and ladies about the 
Court, generally declare to be the most beautiful, the 
wisest, and the best of mankind. To natter a poor boy 
in this base manner was not a very likely way to 
develop whatever good was in him ; and it brought him 
to anything but a good or happy end. 

The Duke of Lancaster, the young King's uncle— com- 
monly called John of Gaunt, from having been born at 
Ghent, which the common people so pronounced— was 
supposed to have some thoughts of the throne himself ; 
but as he was not popular, and the memory of the Black 
Prince was, he submitted to his nephew. 

The war with France being still unsettled, the Govern- 
ment of England wanted money to provide for the ex- 
penses that, might arise out of it ; accordingly a certain 
tax, called the Poll-tax, which had originated in the last 
reign, was ordered to be levied on the people. This was 
a tax on every person in the kingdom, male and female, 
above the age of fourteen, of three groats (or three four- 
penny pieces) a year ; clergymen were charged more, and 
only beggars were exempt. 

I have no need to repeat that the common people of 
England had long been suffering under great oppression. 
They were still the mere slaves of the lords of the land 
on which they lived, and were on most occasions harshly 
and unjustly treated. But, they had begun by this time 
to think very seriously of not bearing quite so much ; 
and, probably, were emboldened by that French insur- 
rection I mentioned in the last chapter. 



172 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

The people of Essex rose against the Poll-tax, and 
being severely handled by the government officers, killed 
some of them. At this very time one of the tax-collectors, 
going his rounds from house to house, at Dartford in 
Kent came to the cottage of one Wat, a tiler by trade, 
and claimed the tax upon his daughter. Her mother, 
who was at home, declared that she was under the age 
of fourteen ; upon that, the collector (as other collectors 
had already done in different parts of England) behaved 
in a savage way, and brutally insulted Wat Tyler's 
daughter. The daughter screamed, the mother screamed. 
Wat the Tiler, who was at work not far off, ran to the 
spot, and did what any honest father under such prov- 
ocation might have have done — struck the collector dead 
at a blow. 

Instantly the people of that town uprose as one man. 
They made Wat Tyler their leader; they joined with the 
people of Essex, who were in arms under a priest called 
Jack Straw; they took out of prison another priest 
named John - Ball; and gathering in numbers as they 
went along, advanced, in a great confused army of poor 
men, to Blackheath. It is said that they wanted to 
abolish all property, and to declare all men equal. I do 
not think this very likely; because they stopped the 
travellers on the roads and made them swear to be true 
to King Richard and the people. Nor were they at all 
disposed to injure those who had done them no harm, 
merely because they were of high station ; for, the King's 
mother, who had to pass through their camp at Blackheath, 
on her way to her young son, lying for safety in the 
Tower of London, had merely to kiss a few dirty-faced 
rough-bearded men who were noisily fond of royalty, 
and so got away in perfect safety. Next day the whole 
mass marched on to London Bridge. 

There was a drawbridge in the middle, which William 
Walworth the Mayor caused to be raised to prevent their 
coming into the city ; but they soon terrified the citizens 
into lowering it again, and spread themselves, with great 
uproar, over the streets. They broke open the prisons; 
they burned the papers in Lambeth Palace ; they de- 
stroyed the Duke of Lancaster's Palace, the Savoy, in 
the Strand, said to be the most beautiful and splendid in 
England ; they set fire to the books and documents in 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 173 

the Temple; and made a great riot. Many of these 
outrages were committed in drunkenness; since those 
citizens, who had well-filled cellars, were only too glad 
to throw them open to save the rest of their property; 
but even the drunken rioters were very careful to steal 
nothing. They were so angry with one man, who was 
seen to take a silver cup at the Savoy Palace and put it 
in his breast, that they drowned him in the river, Clip 
and all. 

The young King had been taken out to treat with them 
before they committed these excesses ; but, he and the 
people about him were so frightened by the riotous 
shouts, that they got back to the Tower in the best way 
they could. This made the insurgents bolder; so they 
•went on rioting away, striking off the heads of those who 
did not, at a moment's notice, declare for King Richard 
and the people; and killing as many of the unpopular 
persons whom they supposed to be their enemies as they 
could by any means lay hold of. In this manner they 
passed one very violent day, and then proclamation was 
made that the King would meet them at Mile-end, and 
grant their requests. 

The rioters went to Mile-end to the number of sixty 
thousand, and the King met them there, and to the King 
the rioters peaceahly proposed four conditions. First, 
that neither they, nor their children, nor any coming after 
them, should he marie slaves any more. Secondly, that 
the rent of land should be fixed at a certain price in money, 
instead of being paid in service. Thirdly, that they 
should have liberty to buy and sell in all markets and 
public places, like other free men. Fourthly, that they 
should be pardoned for past offences. Heaven knows, 
there was nothing very unreasonahle in these proposals! 
The young King deceitfully pretended to think so, and 
kept thirty clerks up, all night, writing out a charter ac- 
cordingly. 

Now, Wat Tyler himself wanted more than this. He 
wanted the entire abolition ot the forest laws. Pie was 
not at Mile-end with the rest, but, while that meeting 
was being held, broke into the Tower of London and slew 
the archbishop and the treasurer, for whose heads the 
people had cried out loudly the day before. He and Ins 
paen even thrust their swords into the bed of the Princess 



174 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

of Wales while the Princess was in it, to make certain th* 
none of their enemies were concealed there. 

So, Wat and his men stiil continued armed, and rode 
about the city. Next morning, the King with a small 
train of some sixty gentlemen — among whom was Wal- 
worth the Mayor — rode into Smithfield, and saw Wat 
and his people at a little distance. Says Wat to his men : 
" There is the King. I will go speak with him, and tell 
him what we want." 

Straightway Wat rode up to him, and began to talk. 
"King," says Wat, "dost thou see all my men there?" 

" Ah," says the King. " Why ? " 

" Because," says Wat, " they are all at my command, 
and have sworn to do whatever I bid them." 

Some declared afterwards that as Wat said this, he 
laid his hand on the King's bridle. Others declared that 
he was seen to play with his own dagger. 1 think, my- 
self, that he just spoke to the King like a rough, angry 
man as he was, and did nothing more. At any rate he 
was expecting no attack, and preparing for no resistance, 
when Walworth the Mayor did the not very valiant deed 
of drawing a short sword and stabbing him in the throat. 
He dropped from his horse, and one of the King's people 
speedily finished him. So fell Wat Tyler. Fawners and 
flatterers made a mighty triumph of it, and set up a cry 
which will occasionally find an echo to this day. But 
Wat was a hard-working man, who had suffered much, 
and had been foully outraged; and it is probable that 
he was a man of a much higher nature and a much braver 
spirit than any of the parasites who exulted then, or have 
exulted since, over his defeat. 

Seeing Wat down, his men immediately bent their bows 
to avenge his fall. If the young King had not had pres- 
ence of mind at that dangerous moment, both he and the 
Mayor to boot, might have followed Tyler pretty fast. 
But the King riding up to the crowd, cried out that Tyler 
was a traitor, and that he would be their leader. They 
were so taken by surprise, that they set up a great shout- 
ing, and followed the boy until he was met at Islington 
by a large body of soldiers. 

The end of this rising was the then usual, end. As 
soon as the King found himself safe, he unsaid all he had 
said, and undid all he had done ; some fifteen kundred of 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 175 

the rioters were tried (mostly in Essex) with great rigor, 
and executed with great cruelty. Many of them were 
hanged on gibbets, and left there as a terror to the country 
people ; and, because their miserable friends took some 
of the bodies down to bury, the King ordered the rest to 
be chained up — which was the beginning of the barbarous 
custom of hanging in chains. The King's falsehood in 
this business makes such a pitiful figure, that I think 
Wat Tyler appears in history as beyond comparison the 
truer and more respectable man of the two. 

Richard was now sixteen years of age, and married 
Anne of Bohemia, an excellent princess, who was called 
" the good Queen Anne." She deserved a better husband ; 
for the King had been fawned and flattered into a treach- 
erous, wasteful, dissolute, bad young man. 

There were two Popes at this time (as if one were not 
enough !), and their quarrels involved Europe in a great 
deal of trouble. Scotland was still troublesome too ; and 
at home there was much jealousy and distrust, and plot- 
ting and counter-plotting, because the King feared the 
ambition of his relations and particularly of his uncle, 
the Duke of Lancaster, and the duke had his party against 
the King, and the King had his party 'against the duke. 
Nor were these home troubles lessened when the duke 
went to Castile to urge his claim to the crown of that 
kingdom ; for then the Duke of Gloucester, another of 
Richard's uncles, opposed him, and influenced the Parlia- 
ment to demand the dismissal of the King's favorite min- 
isters. The King said in reply, that he would not for 
such men dismiss the meanest servant in his kitchen. 
But, it had begun to signify little what a King said when 
a Parliament was determined; so Richard was at last 
obliged to give way, and to agree to another Government 
of the Kingdom, under a commission of fourteen nobles, 
for a year. His uncle of Gloucester was at the head of 
this commission, and, in fact, appointed everybody com- 
posing it. 

Having done all this, the King declared as soon as he 
saw an opportunity that he had never meant to do it, and 
that it was all illegal ; and he got the judges secretly to sign 
a declaration to that effect. The secret oozed out directly, 
and was carried to the Duke of Gloucester. The Duke of 
Gloucester, at the head of forty thousand men, met th§ 



176 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

King on his entering into London to enforce bis authority ; 
the King was helpless against him ; his favorites and 
ministers were impeached and were mercilessly executed. 
Among them were two men whom the people regarded 
with very different feelings; one, Robert Tresilian, Cbief 
Justice, who was hated for having made what was called 
" the bloody circuit " to try the rioters ; the other Sir Si- 
mon Burley, an honorable knight, who had been the dear 
friend of the Black Prince, and the governor and guard- 
ian of the King. For this gentleman's life the good Queen 
even begged of Gloucester on her knees ; but Gloucester 
(with or without reason) feared and hated him, and re- 
plied, that if she valued her husband's crown, she had 
better beg no more. All this was done under what was 
called by some the wonderful — and by others, with better 
reason, the merciless — Parliament. 

But Gloucester's power was not to last forever. He 
held it for only a year longer; in which year the famous 
battle of Otterbourne, sung in the old ballad of Chevy 
Chase, was fought. When the year was out, the King, 
turning suddenly to Gloucester, in the midst of a great 
council said, " Uncle, how old am I?" — " Your highness," 
returned the Duke, "is in your twenty-second year." — 
"Am I so much?" said the King, "then I will manage 
my own affairs! lam much obliged to you, my good 
lords, for your past services, but I need them no more." 
He followed this up, by appointing a new Chancellor and 
a new Treasurer, and announced to the people that he had 
resumed the Government. He held it for eight years with- 
out opposition. Through all that time, he kept his deter- 
mination to revenge himself some day upon his uncle 
Gloucester, in his own breast. 

At last the good queen died, and then the King, desir- 
ing to take a second wife, proposed to his council that he 
should marry Isabella, of France, the daughter of Charles 
the Sixth who, the French courtiers said (as the English 
courtiers had said of Richard), was a marvel of beauty and 
wit, and quite a phenomenon — of seven years old. The 
council were divided about this marriage, but it took place. 
It secured peace between England and France for a quar- 
ter of a century ; but it was strongly opposed to the prej- 
udices of the English people. The Duke of Gloucester, 
who was anxious to take the occasion of making himself 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 177 

popular, declaimed against it loudly, and this at length de- 
cided the King to execute the vengeance he had been nurs- 
ing so long. 

He went with a gay company to the Duke of Gloucester's 
house, Pleshey .Castle, in Essex, where the Duke, suspect- 
ing nothing, came out into the courtyard to receive his 
royal visitor. While the King conversed in a friendly 
manner with the Duchess, the Duke was quietly seized, 
hurried away, shipped for Calais, and lodged in the castle 
there. His friends, the Earls of Arundel and Warwick, 
were taken in the same treacherous manner, and confined 
to their castles. A few days after, at Nottingham, they 
were impeached of high treason. The Earl of Arundel 
was condemned and beheaded, and the Earl of Warwick 
was banished. Then, a writ was sent by a messenger to 
the Governor of Calais, requiring him to send the Duke of 
Gloucester over to be tried. In three days he returned 
an answer that he could not do that, because the Duke of 
Gloucester had died in prison. The Duke was declared a 
traitor, his property was confiscated to the King, a real or 
pretended confession he had made in prison to one of the 
Justices of the Common Pleas was produced against him, 
and there was an end of the matter. How the unfortu- 
nate duke died, very few cared to know. Whether he 
really died naturally ; whether he killed himself ; whether, 
by the King's order, he was strangled, or smothered be- 
tween two beds (as a serving-man of the Governor's named 
Hall, did afterwards declare), cannot be discovered. 
There is not much doubt that he was killed, somehow or 
other, by his nephew's orders. Among the most active 
nobles in these proceedings were the King's cousin, Henry 
Bolingbroke, whom the King had made Duke of Hereford 
to smooth down the old family quarrels, and some others; 
who had in the family-plotting times done just such acts 
themselves as they now condemned in the duke. They 
seem to have been a corrupt set of men ; but such men 
were easily found about the court in such days. 

The people murmured at all this, and were still very 
sore about the French marriage. The nobles saw how 
little the King cared for law, and how crafty he was, and 
began to be somewhat afraid for themselves. The King's 
life was a life of continual feasting and excess; his 
retinue, down to the meanest servants, were dressed in 



ITS A CB1L&S mSTOBT OF EmLAtfD. 

the most costly manner, and caroused at his tables, it is 
related, to the number of ten thousand persons every day. 
He himself, surrounded by a body of ten thousand archers, 
and enriched by a duty on wool which the Commons had 
granted to him for life, saw no danger of ever being other- 
wise than powerful and absolute, and was as fierce and 
haughty as a King could be. 

He had two of his old enemies left, in the persons of 
the Dukes of Hereford and Norfolk. Sparing these no 
more than the others, he tampered with the Duke of 
Hereford until he got him to declare before the Council 
that the Duke of Norfolk had lately held some treasonable 
talk with him, as he was riding near Brentford ; and that 
he had told him, among other things, that he could not 
believe the King's oath — which nobody could, I should 
think. For this treachery he obtained a pardon, and the 
Duke of Norfolk was summoned to appear and defend 
himself. As he denied the charge and said his accuser 
was a liar and a traitor, both noblemen, according to the 
manner of those times, were held in custody, and the 
truth was ordered to be decided by wager of battle at 
Coventry. This wager of battle meant that whosoever 
won the combat was to be considered in the right ; which 
nonsense meant in effect, that no strong man could ever 
be wrong. A great holiday was made ; a great crowd 
assembled, with much parade and show ; and the two 
combatants were about to rush at each other with their 
lances, when the King, sitting in a pavilion to see fair, 
threw down the truncheon he carried in his hand, and 
forbade the battle. The Duke of Hereford was to be 
banished for ten years, and the Duke of Norfolk was to 
banished for life. So said the King. The Duke of Here- 
ford went to France, and went no farther. The Duke of 
Norfolk made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and after- 
wards died at Venice of a broken heart. 

Faster and fiercer, after this, the King went on in his 
career. The Duke of Lancaster, who was the father of 
the Duke of Hereford, died soon after the departure of his 
son ; and, the King, although he had solemnly granted to 
that son leave to inherit his father's property, if it should 
come to him during his banishment, immediately seized 
it all, like a robber. The judges were so afraid of him, 
that they disgraced themselves by declaring this theft to 



A CHILD 1 S BISTOR Y OF ENGLAND. 1?<) 

be just and lawful. His avarice knew no bounds. He 
outlawed seventeen counties at once, on a frivolous pre- 
tence, merely to raise money by way of fines for miscon- 
duct. In short, he did as many dishonest things as he 
could ; and cared so little for the discontent of his subjects 
— though even the spaniel favorites began to whisper to him 
that there was such a thing as discontent afloat — that he 
took that time, of all others, for leaving England and 
making an expedition against the Irish. 

He was scarcely gone, leaving the Duke of York 
Regent in his absence, when his cousin, Henry of Here- 
ford, came over from France to claim the rights of which 
he had been so monstrously deprived. He was imme- 
diately joined by the two great Earls of Northumberland 
and Westmoreland ; and his uncle the Regent, finding 
the King's cause unpopular, and the disinclination of the 
army to act against Henry, very strong, withdrew with 
the royal forces towards Bristol. Henry, at the head of 
an army, came from Yorkshire (where he had landed) to 
London and followed him. They joined their forces — how 
they brought that about, is not distinctly understood — 
and proceeded to Bristol Castle, whither three noblemen 
had taken the young Queen. The castle surrendering, 
they presently put those three noblemen to death. The 
Regent then remained there, and Henry went on to 
Chester. 

All this time, the boisterous weather had prevented the 
King from receiving intelligence of what had occurred. 
At length it was conveyed to him in Ireland, and he sent 
over the Earl of Salisbury, who, landing at Conway, 
rallied the Welshmen, and waited for the King a whole 
fortnight ; at the end of that time the Welshmen, who 
were perhaps not very warm for him in the beginning, 
quite cooled down, and went home. When the King did 
land on the Coast at last, he came with a pretty good 
power, but his men cared nothing for him, and quickly 
deserted. Supposing the Welshmen to be still at Conway, 
he disguised himself as a priest, and made for that place 
in company with his two brothers and some few of their 
adherents. But, there were no Welshmen left — only 
Salisbury and a hundred soldiers. In this distress, the 
King's two brothers, Exeter and Surrey, offered to go to 
Henry to learn what his intentions were. Surrey, who 



180 A CHILD'S BXSTOBT OF ENGLAND. 

was true to Richard, was put into prison, Exeter, who wad 
false, took the royal badge, which was a hart, off his 
shield, and assumed the rose, the badge of Henry. After 
this, it was pretty plain to the King what Henry's inten- 
tions were, without sending any more messengers to ask. 

The fallen King, thus deserted — hemmed in on all 
sides, and pressed with hunger — rode here and rode 
there, and went to this castle, and went to that castle, 
endeavoring to obtain some provisions, but could find 
none. He rode wretchedly back to Conway, and there 
surrendered himself to the Earl of Northumberland, who 
came from Henry, in reality to take him prisoner, but in 
appearance to offer terms ; and whose men were hidden 
not far off. By this earl he was conducted to the castle 
of Flint, where his cousin Henry met him, and dropped 
on his knee as if he were still respectful to his sover- 
eign. 

"Fair cousin of Lancaster," said the King, "you are 
very welcome" (very welcome, no doubt; but he would 
have been more so, in chains or without a head). 

"My lord," replied Henry, "I am come a little before 
nry time; but, with your good pleasure, I will show you 
the reason. You people complain with some bitterness, 
that you have ruled them rigorously for two and twenty 
years. Now, if it please God, I will help you to govern 
them better in future." 

"Fair cousin," replied the abject King, "since it 
pleaseth you, it pleaseth me mightily." 

After this, the trumpets sounded, and the King was 
stuck on a wretched horse, and carried prisoner to 
Chester, where he was made to issue a proclamation, 
calling a Parliament. From Chester he was taken on to- 
wards London. At Lichfield he tried to escape by get- 
ting out of a window and letting himself down into a 
garden ; it was all in vain, however, and he was carried 
on and shut up in the Tower, where no one pitied him, 
and where the whole people, whose patience he had quite 
tired out, reproached him without mercy. Before he got 
there, it is related that his very dog left bim and de- 
parted from his side to lick the hand of Henry. 

The day before the, Parliament met, a deputation went 
to this wretched King, and told him that he had prom- 
ised the Duke of Northumberland at Conway Castle *gr 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 181 

resign the crown. He said he was quite ready to do it, 
and signed a paper in which he renounced his authority 
and absolved his people from their allegiance to him. 
He had so little spirit left that he gave his royal ring to 
his triumphant cousin Henry with his own hand, and 
said, that if he could have had leave to appoint a suc- 
cessor, that same Henry was the man of all others whom 
he would have named. Next day, the Parliament assem- 
bled in Westminster Hall, where Henry sat at the side 
of the throne, which was empty and covered with a cloth 
of gold. The paper just signed by the King was read to 
the multitude amid shouts of joy, which were echoed 
through all the streets ; when some of the noise had died 
away, the King was formerly deposed. Then Henry 
arose, and, making the sign of the cross on his forehead 
and breast, challenged the realm of England as his right ; 
the archbishops of Canterbury and York seated him on 
the throne. 

The multitude shouted again, and the shouts re-echoed 
throughout all the streets. No one remembered, now, 
that Richard the Second had ever been the most beauti- 
ful, the wisest, and the best of princes ; and he now made 
living (to my thinking) a far more sorry spectacle in the 
Tower of London, than Wat Tyler had made, lying 
dead, among the hoofs of the royai horses in Smithfield. 

The Poll-tax died with Wat. The Smiths to the King 
and Royal Family, could make no chains in which the 
King could hang the people's recollection of him; so the 
Poll-tax was never collected. 



182 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



CHAPTER XX. 

ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE FOURTH, CALLED BOLING- 

BROKE. 

During the last reign, the preaching of Wickliffe 
against the pride and cunning of the Pope and all his 
men, had made a great noise in England. Whether the 
new King wished to be in favor with the priests, or 
whether he hoped, by pretending to be very religious, to 
cheat Heaven itself into the belief that he was not an 
usurper, I don't know. Both suppositions are likely 
enough. It is certain that he began his reign by making 
a strong show against the followers of Wickliffe, who 
were called Lollards, or heretics — although his father, 
John of Gaunt, had been of that way of thinking, as he him- 
self had been more than suspected of being. It is no less 
certain that he first established in England the detestable 
and atrocious custom, brought from abroad, of burning 
those people as a punishment for their opinions. It was 
the importation into England of one of the practices of 
what was called the Holy Inquisition: which was the 
most unholy and the most infamous tribunal that ever 
disgraced mankind, and made men more like demons than 
followers of Our Saviour. 

No real right to the crown, as you know, was in this 
King. Edward Mortimer, the young Earl of March — 
who was only eight or nine years old, and who was de- 
scended from the Duke of Clarence, the elder brother of 
Henry's father — was, by succession, the real heir to the 
throne. However, the King got his son declared Prince 
of Wales ; and, obtaining possession of the young Earl 
of March and his little brother, kept them in confinement 
(but not severely) in Windsor Castle. He then required 
the Parliament to decide what was to be done with the 
deposed King, who was quiet enough, and who only said 
that he hoped his cousin Henry would be " a good lord " 
to him. The Parliament replied that they would recom- 



A CHlLiXS HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 183 

mend his being kept in some secret place where the peo- 
ple could not resort, and where his friends should not be 
admitted to see him. Henry accordingly passed this sen- 
tence upon him, and it now began to be pretty clear to 
the nation that Richard the Second would not live very 
long. 

It was a noisy Parliament, as it was an unprincipled 
one, and the Lords quarrelled so violently among them- 
selves as to which of them had been loyal and which dis- 
loyal, and which consistent and which inconsistent, that 
forty gauntlets are said to have been thrown upon the 
floor at one time as challenges to as many battles ; the 
truth being that they were all false and base together, 
and had been, at one time with the old King, and at 
another time with the new one, and seldom true for any 
length of time to any one. They soon began to plot again. 
A conspiracy was formed to invite the King to a tourna- 
ment at Oxford, and then to take him by surprise and kill 
him. The murderous enterprise, which was agreed upon 
at secret meetings in the house of the Abbot of West- 
minster, was betrayed by the Earl of Rutland — one of the 
conspirators. The King, instead of going to the tourna- 
ment or staying at Windsor (where the conspirators sud- 
denly' went, on finding themselves discovered, with the 
hope of seizing him), retired to London, proclaimed them 
all traitors, and advanced upon them with a great force, 
They retired into the West of England, proclaiming 
Richard King ; but the people rose against them, and they 
were all slain. Their treason hastened the death of the 
deposed monarch. Whether he was killed by hired as- 
sassins, or whether he was starved to death, or whether 
he refused food on hearing of his brothers being killed 
(who were in that plot), is very doubtful. He met his 
death somehow ; and his body was publicly shown at St. 
Paul's Cathedral with only the lower part of the face un- 
covered. I can scarcely doubt that he was killed by the 
King's orders. 

The French wife of the miserable Richard was now 
only ten years old; and when her father, Charles of 
France, heard of her misfortunes and of her lonely con- 
dition in England, he went mad : as he had several times 
done before, during the last five or sb: years. The 
French dukes of Burgundy and Bourbon took up the poor 



184 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

girl's cause, without caring much about it, but on the 
chance of getting something out of England. The peo- 
ple of Bordeaux, who had a sort of superstitious attach- 
ment to the memory of Richard, because he was born 
there, swore by the Lord that he had been the best man 
in all his kingdom — which was going rather far — and 
promised to do great things against the English. Never- 
theless, when they came to consider that they, and the 
whole people of France, were ruined by their own nobles, 
and that the English rule was much the better of the two, 
they cooled down again; and the two dukes, although 
they were very great men, could do nothing without them. 
Then, began negotiations between France and England for 
the sending home to Paris of the poor little Queen with 
all her jewels and her fortune of two hundred thousand 
francs in gold. The King was quite willing to restore the 
young lady, and even the jewels ; but he said he really 
could not part with the money. So, at last she was safely 
deposited at Paris without her fortune, and then the Duke 
of Burgundy (who was cousin to the French King) began 
to quarrel with the Duke of Orleans (who was brother to 
the French King) about the whole matter ; and those 
two dukes made France even more wretched than ever. 

As the idea of conquering Scotland was still popular 
at home, the King marched to the river Tyne and de- 
manded homage of the King of that country. This being 
refused, he advanced to Edinburgh, but did little there; 
for, his army being in want of provisions, and the Scotch 
being very careful to hold him in check without giving 
battle, he was obliged to retire. It is to his immortal 
honor that in this sally he burnt no villages and slaugh- 
tered no people, but was particularly careful that his 
army should be merciful and harmless. It was a great 
example in those ruthless times. 

A war among the border people of England and Scot- 
land went on for twelve months, and then the Earl of 
Northumberland, the nobleman who had helped Henry 
to the crown, began to rebel against him — probably 
because nothing that Henry could do for him would 
satisfy his extravagant expectations. There w T as a cer- 
tain Welsh gentleman, named Owen - Glendower, who 
had been a student in one of the Inns of Court, and had 
afterwards been in the service of the late King, whose 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 185 

Welsh property vv as taken from him by a powerful lord 
related to the present King, who was his neighbor. Ap- 
pealing for redress, and getting none, he took up arms, 
was made an outlaw, and declared himself sovereign of 
Wales. He pretended to be a magician ; and not only 
were the Welsh people stupid enough to believe him, 
but, even Henry believed him too ; for, making three 
expeditions into Wales, and being three times driven 
back by the wildness of the country, the bad weather, 
and the skill of Glendower, he thought he was defeated 
by the Welshman's magic arts. However, he took Lord 
Grey and Sir Edmund Mortimer, prisoners, and allowed 
the relatives of Lord Grey to ransom him, but would not 
extend such favor to Sir Edmund Mortimer. Now Henry 
Percy, called Hotspur, son of the Earl of Northumber- 
land, who was married to Mortimer's sister, is supposed 
to have taken offence at this ; and, therefore, in conjunc- 
tion with his father and some others, to have joined 
Owen Glendower, and risen against Henry. It is by no 
means clear that this was the real cause of the conspiracy ; 
but perhaps it was made the pretext. It was formed, 
and was very powerful ; including Scroop, Archbishop 
of York, and the Earl of Douglas, a powerful and brave 
Scottish nobleman. The King was prompt and active, 
and the two armies met at Shrewsbury. 

There were about fourteen thousand men in each. The 
old Earl of Northumberland being sick, the rebel forces 
were led by his son. The King wore plain armor to de- 
ceive the enemy ; and four noblemen, with the same ob- 
ject,, wore the royal arms. The rebel charge was so 
furious, that every one of those gentlemen was killed, 
the royal standard was beaten down, and the young 
Prince of Wales was severely wounded in the face. But, 
he was one of the bravest and best soldiers that ever 
lived, and he fought so well, and the King's troops were 
so encouraged by his bold example, that they rallied im- 
mediately, and cut the enemy's forces all to pieces. Hot- 
spur was killed by an arrow in the brain, and the rout 
was so complete that the whole rebellion was struck 
down by this one blow. The Earl of Northumberland 
surrendered himself soon after hearing of the death of 
his son, and received a pardon for all his offences. 

There were some lingerings of rebellion yet : Owep 



186 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF EN (LAND. 

Glendower being retired to Wales, and a preposterous 
story being spread among the ignorant people that King 
Richard was still alive. How they could have believed 
such nonsense it is difficult to imagine ; but they cer- 
tainly did suppose that the Court fool of the late King, 
who was something like him, was he, himself; so that it 
seemed as if, after giving so much trouble to the country 
in his life, he was still to trouble it after his death. This 
was not the worst. The young Earl of March and his 
brother were stolen out of Windsor Castle. Being re- 
taken, and being found to have been spirited away by one 
Lady Spencer, she accused her own brother, that Earl of 
Rutland who was in the former conspiracy and was now 
Duke of York, of being in the plot. For this he was 
ruined in fortune, though not put to death; and then 
another plot arose among the old Earl of Northumber- 
land, some other lords, and that same Scroop, Archbishop 
of York, who was with the rebels before. These con- 
spirators caused a writing to be posted on the church 
doors, accusing the King of a variety of crimes ; but, the 
King being eager and vigilant to oppose them, they were 
all taken, and the Archbishop was executed. This was 
the first time that a great churchman had been slain by 
the law in England ; but the King was resolved that it 
should be done, and done it was. 

The next most remarkable event of this time was the 
seizure, by Henry, of the heir to the Scottish throne — 
James, a boy of nine years old. He had been put aboard- 
ship by his father, the Scottish King Robert, to save him 
from the designs of his uncle, when, on his way to France, 
he was accidentally taken by some English cruisers. He 
remained a prisoner in England for nineteen years, and 
became in his prison a student and a famous poet. 

With the exception of occasional troubles with the 
Welsh and with the French, the rest of King Henry's 
reign was quiet enough. But, the King was far from 
happy, and probably was troubled in his conscience by 
knowing that he had usurped the crown, and had occa- 
sioned the death of his miserable cousin. The Prince of 
Wales, though brave and generous, is said to have been 
wild and dissipated, and even to have drawn his sword on 
Gascoigne, the Chief Justice of the King's Bench, be- 
cause he was firm in dealing impartially with one of 



A CHILD'S HISTOBY OF ENGLAND. 187 

his dissolute companions. Upon this the Chief Justice 
is said to have ordered him immediately to prison ; the 
Prince of Wales is said to have submitted with a good 
grace ; and the King is said to have exclaimed, " Happy 
is the monarch who has so just a judge, and a son so 
willing to obey the laws." This is all very doubtful, and 
so is another story (of which Shakespeare has made 
beautiful use), that the Prince once took the crown out of 
his father's chamber as he was sleeping, and tried it on 
his own head. 

The King's health sank more and more, and he became 
subject to violent eruptions on the face and to bad 
epileptic fits, and his spirits sank every day. At last, as 
he was praying before the shrine of St. Edward at West- 
minster Abbey, he was seized with a terrible fit, and was 
carried into the Abbot's chamber, where he presently 
died. It had been foretold that he would die at Jerusalem, 
which certainly is not, and certainly never was, West- 
minster. But, as the Abbot's room had long been called 
the Jerusalem chamber, people said it was all the same 
thing, and were quite satisfied with the prediction. 

This King died on the 20th of March, 1413, in the 
forty-seventh year of his age, and the fourteenth of his 
reign. He was buried in Canterbury Cathedral. He had 
been twice married, and had, by his first wife, a family of 
four sons and two daughters. Considering his duplicity 
before he came to the throne, his unjust seizure of it, and 
above all, his making that monstrous law for the burn- 
ing of what the priests called heretics, he was a reason- 
ably good king, as kings went. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE FIFTH. 

First Part. 

The Prfnce of Wales began his reign like a generous 
and honest man. He set the young Earl of March free ; 
he restored their estates and their honors to the Percy 
family, who had lost them by their rebellion against his 



188 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

father; he ordered the imbecile and unfortunate Richard 
to be honorably buried among the Kings of England* 
and he dismissed all his wild companions, with assur- 
ances that they should not want, if they would resolve 
to be steady, faithful, and true. 

It is much easier to burn men than to burn their opin- 
ions; and those of the Lollards were spreading every 
day. The Lollards were represented by the priests — 
probably falsely for the most part — to entertain treason- 
able designs against the new King; and Henry, suffering 
himself to be worked upon by these representations, 
sacrificed his friend Sir John Oldcastle, the Lord Cob- 
ham, to them, after trying in vain to convert him by 
arguments. He was declared guilty, as the head of the 
sect, and sentenced to the flames ; but he escaped from 
the Tower before the day of execution (postponed for 
fifty days by the King himself), and summoned the Lol- 
lards to meet him near London on a certain day. So the 
priests told the King, at least. I doubt whether there 
was any conspiracy beyond such as was got up by their 
agents. On the day appointed, instead of five and 
twenty thousand men, under the command of Sir John 
Oldcastle, in the meadows of St. Giles, the King found 
only eighty men, and no Sir John at all. There was, in 
another place, an addle-headed brewer, who had gold 
trappings to his horses, and a pair of gilt spurs in his 
breast — expecting to be made a knight next day by Sir 
John, and so to gain the right to wear them — but there 
was no Sir John, nor did anybody give any information 
respecting him, though the King offered great rewards 
for such intelligence. Thirty of these unfortunate Lol- 
lads were hanged and drawn immediately, and were then 
burnt, gallows and all ; and the various prisons in and 
around London were crammed full of others. Some of 
these unfortunate men made various confessions of trea- 
sonable designs ; but such confessions were easily got, 
under torture and the fear of lire, and are very little to 
be trusted. To finish the sad story of Sir John Oldcastle 
at once, I may mention that he escaped into Wales, and 
remained there safely for four years. When discovered 
by Lord Powis, it is very doubtful if he would have been 
taken alive — so great was the old soldier's bravery — if a 
miserable old woman Jiad not come belnn4 hixn an4 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 189 

broken his legs with a stool. He was carried to London 
in a horse-litter, was fastened by an iron chain to a gib- 
bet, and so roasted to death. 

To make the state of France as plain as I can in a few 
words, I should tell you that the Duke of Orleans, and 
the Duke of Burgundy, commonly called " John without 
fear," had had a grand reconciliation of their quarrel in 
the last reign, and had appeared to be quite in a heavenly 
state of mind. Immediately after which, on a Sunday, 
in the public streets of Paris, the Duke of Orleans was 
murdered by a party of twenty men, set on by the Duke 
of Burgundy — according to his own deliberate confession. 
The widow of King Richard had been married in France 
to the eldest son of the Duke of Orleans. The poor mad 
King was quite powerless to help his daughter, and the 
Duke of Burgundy became the real master of France. 
Isabella dying, her husband (Duke of Orleans since the 
death of his father) married the daughter of the Count 
of Armagnac, who, being a much abler man than his 
young son-in-law, headed his party ; thence called after 
him Armagnacs. Thus, France was now in this terrible 
condition, that it had in it the party of the King's son, 
the Dauphin Louis ; the party of the Duke of Burgundy, 
who was the father of the Dauphin's ill-used wife ; and 
the party of the Armagnacs ; all hating each other ; all 
fighting together; all composed of the most depraved 
nobles that the earth has ever known ; and all tearing un- 
happy France to pieces. 

The late King had watched these dissensions from 
England, sensible (like the French people) that no enemy 
of France could injure her more than her own nobility. 
The present King now advanced a claim to the French 
throne. His demand being, of course, refused, he reduced 
his proposal to a certain large amount of French terri- 
tory, and to demanding the French princess, Catherine, 
in marriage, with a fortune of two millions of golden 
crowns. He was offered less territory and fewer crowns, 
and no princess; but he called his ambassadors home 
and prepared for war. Then, he proposed to take the 
princess with one million of crowns. The French Court 
replied that he should have the princess with two hun- 
dred thousand crowns less ; he said this would not do (he 
had never seen the princess in his life), and assembled 



190 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

his army at Southampton. There was a short plot at 
home just at that time, for deposing him, and making 
the Earl of March king ; but, the conspirators were all 
speedily condemned and executed, and the King embarked 
for France. 

It is dreadful to observe how long a bad example will 
be followed ; but, it is encouraging to know that a good 
example is never thrown away. The King's first act on 
disembarking at the mouth of the river Seine, three miles 
from Harfieur, was to imitate his father, and to proclaim 
his solemn orders that the lives and property of the peace- 
able inhabitants should be respected on pain of death. 
It is agreed by French writers, to his lasting renown, 
that even while his soldiers were suffering the greatest 
distress from want of food, these commands were rigidly 
obeyed. 

With an army in all of thirty thousand men, he be- 
sieged the town of Harfieur both by sea and land for five 
weeks ; at the end of which time the town surrendered, 
and the inhabitants were allowed to depart with only five- 
pence each, and a part of their clothes. All the rest of 
their possessions was divided amongst the English army. 
But, that army suffered so much, in spite of its successes, 
from disease and privation, that it was already reduced 
one-half. Still, the King was determined not to retire 
until he had struck a greater blow. Therefore against 
the advice of all his counsellors, he moved on with his 
little force towards Calais. When he came up to the river 
Somme he was unable to cross, in consequence of the ford 
being fortified ; and, as the English moved up the left 
bank of the river looking for a crossing, the French, who 
had broken all the bridges, moved up the right bank, 
watching them, and waiting to attack them when they 
should try to pass it. At last the English found a cross- 
ing and got safely over. The French held a council of 
war at Rouen, resolved to give the English a battle, and 
sent heralds to King Henry to know by which road he 
was going. " By the road that will take me straight to 
Calais ! " said the King, and sent them away with a 
present of a hundred crowns. 

The English moved on until they beheld the French, 
and then the King gave orders to form in line of battle. 
The French not coming up, the army broke up after re- 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 191 

maining in battle-array till night, and got good rest and 
refreshment at a neighboring village. The French were 
now all lying in another village, through which they knew 
the English must pass. They were resolved that the 
English should begin the battle. The English had no 
means of retreat, if their King had had any such inten- 
tion ; and so the two armies passed the night, close to- 
gether. 

To understand these armies well, you must bear in 
mind that the immense French army had, among its not- 
able persons, almost the whole of that wicked nobility, 
whose debauchery had made France a desert ; and so be- 
sotted were they by pride, and by contempt for the com- 
mon people, that they had scarcely any bowmen (if indeed 
they had any at all) in their whole enormous number : 
which, compared with the English army, was at least as 
six to one. For these proud fools had said that the bow 
was not a fit weapon for knightly hands, and that France 
must be defended by gentlemen only. We shall see pres- 
ently, what hand the gentlemen made of it. 

Now, on the English side, among the little force, there 
was a good proportion of men who were not gentlemen 
by any means, but who were good stout archers for all 
that. Among them — in the morning — having slept little 
at night, while the French were carousing and making 
sure of victory — the King rode, on a gray horse ; wearing 
on his head a helmet of shining steel, surmounted by a 
crown of gold, sparkling with precious stones ; and bear- 
ing over his armor, embroidered together, the arms of 
England and the arms of France. The archers looked at 
the shining helmet and the crown of gold and the spark- 
ling jewels, and admired them all; but what they ad- 
mired most was the King's cheerful face, and his bright 
blue eye, as he told them that, for himself, he had made 
up his mind to conquer there or to die there, and that 
England should never have a ransom to pay for him. 
There was one brave knight who chanced to say that he 
wished some of the many gallant gentlemen and good 
soldiers, who were then idle at home in England, were 
there to increase their numbers. But the King told him 
that, for his part, he did not wish for one more man. 
" The fewer we have," said he, " the greater will be the 
honor we shall win ! " His men, being now all in good 



192 A CHILD'S HISTOBY OF ENGLAND. 

heart, were refreshed with bread and wine, and heard 
prayers, and waited quietly for the French. The King 
waited for the French, because they were drawn up thirty 
deep (the little English force was only three deep), on very 
difficult and heavy ground ; and he knew that when they 
moved, there must be confusion among them. 

As they did not move, he sent off two parties : — one to 
lie concealed in a wood on the left of the French : the 
other, to set fire to some houses behind the French after 
the battle should be begun. This was scarcely done, 
when three of the proud French gentlemen, who were to 
defend their country without any help from the base 
peasants, came riding out, calling upon the English to 
surrender. The King warned those gentlemen himself 
to retire with all speed if they cared for their lives, and 
ordered the English banners to advance. Upon that, Sir 
Thomas Erpingham, a great English general, who com- 
manded the archers, threw his truncheon into the air, 
joyfully; and all the Englishmen, kneeling down upon 
the ground and biting it as if they took possession of the 
country, rose up with a great shout and fell upon the 
French. 

Every archer was furnished with a great stake tipped 
with iron ; and his orders were, to thrust this stake into 
the ground, to discharge his arrow, and then to fall back 
when the French horsemen came on. As the haughty 
French gentlemen, who were to break the English archers 
and utterly destroy them with their knightly lances, 
came riding up, they were received with such a blinding 
storm of arrows, that they broke and turned. Horses 
and men rolled over one another, and the confusion was 
terrific. Those who rallied and charged the archers got 
among the stakes on slippery and boggy ground, and 
were so bewildered that the English archers — who wore 
no armor, and even took off their leathern coats to 
be more active — cut them to pieces, root and branch. 
Only three French horsemen got within the stakes, and 
those were instantly despatched. All this time the dense 
French army, being in armor, were sinking knee-deep 
into the mire ; while the light English archers, half naked, 
were as fresh and active as if they were fighting on a 
marble floor. 

But now, the second division of the French coming to 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND, 198 

the relief of the first, closed up in a firm mass ; the Eng^ 
dsh, headed by the King, attacked them ; and the dead- 
liest part of the battle began. The King's brother, the 
Duke of Clarence, was struck down, and numbers of the 
French surrounded him ; but, King Henry, standing 
over the body, fought like a lion until they were beaten 
off. 

Presently, came up a band of eighteen French knights, 
bearing the banner of a certain French lord, who had 
sworn to kill or take the English King. One of them 
struck him such a blow with a battle-axe that he reeled 
and fell upon his knees; but, his faithful men, immedi- 
ately closing round him, killed every one of those eight- 
een knights, and so that French lord never kept his 
oath. 

The French Duke of Alen9on, seeing this, made a des- 
perate charge, and cut his way close up to the Royal 
Standard of England. He beat down the Duke of York, 
who was standing near it; and, when the King came to 
his rescue, struck off a piece of the crown he wore. But, 
he never struck another blow in this world : for, even as 
he was in the act of saying who he was, and that he sur- 
rendered to the King ; and even as the King stretched 
out his hand to give him a safe and honorable acceptance 
of the offer ; he fell dead, pierced by innumerable wounds. 

The death of this nobleman decided the battle. The 
third division of the French army, which had never struck 
a blow yet, and which was in itself, more than double the 
whole English power, broke and fled. At this time of 
the fight, the English, who as yet had made no prisoners, 
began to take them in immense numbers, and were still 
occupied in doing so, or in killing those who would not 
surrender, when a great noise arose in the rear of the 
French — their flying banners were seen to stop — and King 
Henry, supposing a great re-enforcement to have arrived, 
gave orders that all the prisoners should be put to death. 
As soon, however, as it was found that the noise was 
only occasioned by a body of plundering peasants, the 
terrible massacre was stopped. 

Then King Henry called to him the French herald, 
and asked him to whom the victory belonged. 

The herald replied, " To the King of England." 

" We have not made this havoc and slaughter," said 



194 A CHILD'S HISTORY Off ENGLAND. 

the King. " It is the wrath of Heaven on the sins of 
France. What is the name of that castle yonder ? " 

The herald answered him, " My lord, it is the castle of 
Azincourt." 

Said the King, " From henceforth this battle shall be 
known to posterity by the name of the battle of Azin- 
court." 

Our English historians have made it Agincourt ; but, 
under that name, it will ever be famous in English annals. 

The loss upon the French side was enormous. Three 
Dukes were killed, two more were taken prisoners, seven 
Counts were killed, three more were taken prisoners, and 
ten thousand knights and gentlemen were slain upon the 
field. The English loss amounted to sixteen hundred 
men, among whom were the Duke of York and the Earl 
of Suffolk. 

War is a dreadful thing ; and it is appalling to know 
how the English were obliged next morning, to kill those 
prisoners mortally wounded, who yet writhed in agony 
upon the ground ; how the dead upon the French side were 
stripped by their own countrymen and countrywomen, 
and afterwards buried in great pits ; how the dead upon the 
English side were piled up in a great barn, and how their 
bodies and the barn were all burned together. It is in 
such things, and in many more much too horrible to 
relate, that the real desolation and wickedness of war 
consist. Nothing can make war otherwise than horrible. 
But the dark side of it was little thought of and soon 
forgotten ; and it cast no shade of trouble on the English 
people, except on those who had lost friends or relations 
in the fight. They welcomed their King home with shouts 
of rejoicing, and plunged into the water" to bear him 
ashore on their shoulders, and flocked out in crowds to 
welcome him in every town through which he passed, and 
hung rich carpets and tapestries out of the windows, and 
strewed the streets with flowers, and made the fountains 
run with wine, as the great field of Agincourt had run 
with blood. 

Second Part. 

That proud and wicked French nobility who dragged 
their country to destruction, and who were every day and 
every year regarded with deeper hatred and detestation 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 195 

in the hearts of the French people, learned nothing, even 
from the defeat of Agincourt. So far from uniting 
against the common enemy, they became, among them- 
selves, more violent, more bloody, and more false — if that 
were possible— than they had been before. The Count of 
Armagnac persuaded the French king to plunder of her 
treasures Queen Isabella of Bavaria, and to make her a 
prisoner. She, who had hitherto been the bitter enemy 
of the Duke of Burgundy, proposed to join him, in revenge* 
He attacked her guards and carried her off to Troyes, 
where she proclaimed herself Regent of France, and 
made him her lieutenant. The Armagnac party were at 
that time possessed of Paris ; but, one of the gates of 
the city being secretly opened on a certain night to a 
party of the duke's men, they got into Paris, threw into 
the prisons all the Armagnacs upon whom they could 
lay their hands, and, a few nights afterwards, with the 
aid of a furious mob of sixty thousand people, broke the 
prisons open, and killed them all. The former Dauphin 
was now dead, and the king's third son bore the title. 
Him, in the height of this murderous scene, a French 
knight hurried out of bed, wrapt in a sheet, and bore 
away to Poitiers. So, when the revengeful Isabella and 
the Duke of Burgundy entered Paris in triumph after 
the slaughter of their enemies, the Dauphin was pro- 
clamed at Poitiers as the real Regent. 

King Henry had not been idle since his victory of 
Agincourt, but had repulsed a brave attempt of the 
French to recover Harfleur ; had gradually conquered a 
great part of Normandy ; and at this crisis of affairs took 
the important town of Rouen, after a siege of half a year. 
This great loss so alarmed the French, that the Duke 
of Burgundy proposed that a meeting to treat of peace 
should be held between the French and the English kings 
in a plain by the river Seine. On the appointed day, King 
Henry appeared there, with his two brothers, Clarence 
and Gloucester, and a thousand men. The unfortunate 
French King, being more mad than usual that day, could 
not come ; but the Queen came, and with her the Princess 
Catherine : who was a very lovely creature, and who made 
a real impression on King Henry, now that he saw her 
for the first time. This was the most important circum- 
stance that arose out of the meeting. 



196 A CBIl&S HIST6&Y OF mQLAND. 

As if it were impossible for a French nobleman of 
that time to be true to his word of honor in anything, 
Henry discovered that the Duke of Burgundy was, at 
that very moment, in secret treaty with the Dauphin ; 
and he therefore abandoned the negotiation. 

The Duke of Burgundy, and the Dauphin, each of 
whom with the best reason distrusted the other as a 
noble ruffian surrounded by a party of noble ruffians, 
were rather at a loss how to proceed after this ; but at 
length they agreed to meet on a bridge over the river 
Yonne, where it was arranged that there should be two 
strong gates put up, with an empty space between 
them ; and that the Duke of Burgundy should come into 
that space by one gate, with ten men only ; and that the 
Dauphin should come into that space by the other gate, 
also with ten men, and no more. 

So far the Dauphin kept his word, but no farther. 
When the Duke of Burgundy was on his knee before 
him in the act of speaking, one of the Dauphin's noble 
ruffians cut the said duke down with a small axe, and 
others speedily finished him. 

It was in vain for the Dauphin to pretend that this base 
murder was not done with his consent ; it was too bad, 
even for France, and caused a general horror. The 
duke's heir hastened to make a treaty with King Henry, 
and the French Queen engaged that her husband should 
consent to it, whatever it was. Henry made peace, on 
condition of receiving the Princess Catherine in marriage, 
and being made Regent of France during the rest of the 
King's lifetime, and succeeding to the French crown at 
his death. He was soon married to the beautiful Prin- 
cess, and took her proudly home to England where she 
was crowned with great honor and glory. 

This peace was called the Perpetual Peace ; we shall 
soon see how long it lasted. It gave great satisfaction 
to the French people, although they were so poor and 
miserable, that, at the time of the celebration of the 
Royal marriage, numbers of them were dying with starv- 
ation, on the dunghills in the streets of Paris. There 
was some resistance on the part of the Dauphin in some 
few parts of France, but King Henry beat it all down. 

And now, with his great possessions in France secured, 
and his beautiful wife to cheer him, and a son born to 



A CHILD'S HISTOitY OF ENGLAND. 197 

give him greater happiness, all appeared bright before 
him. But, in the fulness of his triumph and the height 
of his power, Death came upon him, and his day was 
done. When he fell ill at Vincennes, and found that he 
could not recover, he was very calm and quiet, and spoke 
serenely to those who wept around his bed. His wife and 
child, he said, he left to the loving care of his brother the 
Duke of Bedford, and his other faithful nobles. He 
gave them his advice that England should establish a 
friendship with the new Duke of Burgundy, and offer 
him the regency of France ; that it should not set free 
the royal princes who had been taken at Agincourt ; and 
that, whatever quarrel might arise with France, England 
should never make peace without holding Normandy. 
Then, he laid down his head, and asked the attendant 
priests to chant the penitential psalms. Amid which 
solemn sounds, on the thirty-first of August, one thousand 
four hundred and twenty-two, in only the thirty-fourth 
year of his age and the tenth of his reign, King Henry 
the Fifth passed away. 

Slowly and mournfully they carried his embalmed 
body in a procession of great state to Paris, and thence 
to Rouen where his Queen was : from whom the sad in- 
telligence of his death was concealed until he had been 
dead some days. Thence, lying on a bed of crimson and 
gold, with a golden crown upon the head, and a golden 
ball and sceptre lying in the nerveless hands, they carried 
it to Calais, with such a great retinue as seemed to dye 
the road black. The King of Scotland acted as chief 
mourner, all the Royal Household followed, the knights 
wore black armor and black plumes of feathers, crowds 
of men bore torches, making the night as light as day ; and 
the widowed Princess followed last of all. At Calais there 
was a fleet of ships to bring the funeral host to Dover. 
And so, by way of London Bridge, where the service for 
the dead was chanted as it passed along, they brought 
the body to Westminster Abbey, and there buried it 
with great respect. 



198 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND, ' 

CHAPTER XXII. 

ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE SIXTH. 

Part the First. 

It had been the wish of the late King, that while his 
infant son King Henry the Sixth, at this time only nine 
months old, was under age, the Duke of Gloucester should 
be appointed Regent. The English Parliament, however, 
preferred to appoint a Council of Regency, with the Duke 
of Bedford at its head : to be represented, in his absence 
only, by the Duke of Gloucester. The Parliament would 
seem to have been wise in this, for Gloucester soon showed 
himself to, be ambitious and troublesome, and, in the 
gratification of his own personal schemes, gave dangerous 
offence to the Duke of Burgundy, which was with difficulty 
adjusted. 

As that duke declined the Regency of France, it was 
bestowed by the poor French King upon the Duke of 
Bedford. But, the French King dying within two months, 
the Dauphin instantly asserted his claim to the French 
throne, and was actually crowned under the title of 
Charles the Seventh. The Duke of Bedford, to be a 
match for him, entered into a friendly league with the 
Dukes of Burgundy and Brittany, and gave them his two 
sisters in marriage. War with France was immediately 
renewed, and the Perpetual Peace came to an untimely 
end. 

In the first campaign, the English, aided by this alli- 
ance, were speedily successful. As Scotland, however, 
had sent the French five thousand men, and might send 
more, or attack the North of England while England was 
busy with France, it was considered that it would be a 
good thing to offer the Scottish King, James, who had 
been so long imprisoned, his liberty, on his paying forty 
thousand pounds for his board and lodging during nine- 
teen years, and engaging to forbid his subjects from 
serving under the flag of France. It is pleasant to know, 
not only that the amiable captive at last regained his 
freedom upon these terms, but, that he married a noble 
English lady with whom he had been long in love, and 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 19S 

became an excellent King. I am afraid we have met 
with some Kings in this history, and shall meet with 
some more, who would have been very much the better, 
and would have left the world much happier, if they had 
been imprisoned nineteen years too. 

In the second campaign, the English gained a consider, 
able victory at Verneuil, in a battle which was chiefly 
remarkable, otherwise, for their resorting to the odd 
expedient of tying their baggage-horses together by the 
heads and tails, and jumbling them up with the baggage, 
so as to convert them into a sort of live fortification — 
which was found useful to the troops, but which I should 
think was not agreeable to the horses. For three years 
afterwards very little was done, owing to both sides being 
too poor for war, which is a very expensive entertain- 
ment ; but, a council was then held in Paris, in which it 
was decided to lay siege to the town of Orleans, which 
was a place of great importance to the Dauphin's cause. 
An English army of ten thousand men was despatched on 
this service, under the command of the Earl of Salisbury, 
a general of fame. He being unfortunately killed early 
in the siege, the Earl of Suffolk took his place ; under 
whom (re-enforced by Sir John Falstaff, who brought 
up four hundred wagons laden with salt herrings and 
other provisions for the troops, and, beating off the French 
who tried to intercept him, came victorous out of a hot 
skirmish, which was afterwards called in jest the Battle 
of the Herrings), the town of Orleans was so completely 
hemmed in, that the besieged proposed to yield it up to 
their countryman the Duke of Burgundy. The English 
general, however, replied that his English men had won 
it, so far, by their blood and valor, and that his English 
men must have it. There seemed to be no hope for the 
town, or for the Dauphin, who was so dismayed that ho 
even thought of flying to Scotland or to Spain — when a 
peasant girl rose up and changed the whole state of 
affairs. 

The story of this peasant girl I have now to tell. 

Part the Second. — The Story of Joan of Arc. 

In a remote village among some wild hills in the prov- 
ince of Lorraine, there lived a countryman whose name 



200 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

was Jacques d'Arc. He had a daughter, Joan of Arc, 
who was at this time in her twentieth year. She had 
been a solitary girl from her childhood; she had often 
tended sheep and cattle for whole days where no human 
figure was seen or human voice heard ; and she had often 
knelt, for hours together, in the gloomy empty little 
village chapel, looking up at the altar and at the dim lamp 
burning before it, until she fancied that she saw shadowy 
figures standing there, and even that she heard them 
speak to her. The people in that part of France were 
very ignorant and superstitious, and they had many 
ghostly tales to tell about what they dreamed, and what 
they saw among the lonely hills when the clouds and the 
mist were resting on them. So, they easily believed that 
Joan saw strange sights and they whispered among them- 
selves that angels and spirits talked to her. 

At last, Joan told her father that she had one day been 
surprised by a great unearthly light, and had afterwards 
heard a solemn voice, which said it was Saint Michael's 
voice, telling her that she was to go and help the Dauphin. 
Soon after this (she said) Saint Catherine and Saint 
Margaret had appeared to her, with sparkling crowns 
upon their heads, and had encouraged her to be virtuous 
and resolute. These visions had returned sometimes; 
but the Voices very often ; and the voices always said, 
" Joan, thou art appointed by Heaven to go and help the 
Dauphin!" She almost always heard them while the 
chapel bells were ringing. 

There is no doubt, now, that Joan believed she saw 
and heard these things. It is very well known that such 
delusions are a disease which is not by any means 
uncun^non. It is probable enough that there were figures 
of Saint Michael, and Saint Catherine, and Saint Margaret, 
in the little chapel (where they would be very likely to 
have shining crowns upon their heads), and that they 
first gave Joan the idea of those three personages. She 
had long been a moping, fanciful girl, and, though she 
was a very good girl, I dare say she was a little vain, 
and wishful for notoriety. 

Her father, something wiser than his neighbors, said, 
"I tell thee, Joan, it is thy fancy. Thou hadst better 
have a kind husband to take care of thee, girl, and work 
to employ thy mind ! " But Joan told him in reply, that 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 201 

she had taken a vow never to have a husband, and that 
she must go as Heaven directed her, to help the Dau- 
phin. 

It happened, unfortunately for her father's persuasions, 
and most unfortunately for the poor girl, too, that a party 
of the Dauphin's enemies found their way into the village 
while Joan's disorder was at this point, and burnt the 
chapel, and drove out the inhabitants. The cruelties she 
saw committed, touched Joan's heart and made her worse. 
She said that the voices and the figures were now con- 
tinually with her ; that they told her she was the girl 
who, according to an old prophecy, was to deliver France ; 
and she must go and help the Dauphin, and must remain 
with him until he should be crowned at Rheims; and 
that she must travel a long way to a certain lord named 
Baudricourt, who could and would bring her into the 
Dauphin's presence. 

As her father still said, " I tell thee, Joan, it is thy 
fancy," she set off to find out this lord, accompanied by 
an uncle, a poor village wheelwright and cart-maker, who 
ibelieved in the reality of her visions. They travelled a 
! long way and went on and on, over a rough country, full 
I of the Duke of Burgundy's men, and of all kinds of rob- 
ibers and marauders, until they came to where this lord 
I was. 

i "When his servants told him that there was a poor peas- 
ant girl named Joan of Arc, accompanied by nobody but 
I an old village wheelwright and cart-maker, who wished to 
I see him because she was commanded to help the Dauphin 
| and save France, Baudricourt burst out a-laughing, and 
ibade them send the girl away. But, he soon heard so 
much about her lingering in the town, and praying in the 
churches, and seeing visions, and doing harm to no one, 
! :hat he sent for her, and questioned her. As she said 
I the same things after she had been well sprinkled with 
aoly water as she had said before the sprinkling, Baudri- 
3ourt began to think there might be something in it. At 
dl events, he thought it worth while to send her to the 
sown of Chinon, where the Dauphin was. So, he bought 
ier a horse, and a sword, and gave her two squires to 
conduct her. As the Voices had told Joan that she was 
io wear a man's dress, now, she put one on, and girded 
ier sword to her side, and bound spurs to her heels, and 



202 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

mounted her horse and rode away with her two squires. 
As to her uncle the wheelwright, he stood staring at his 
niece in wonder until she was out of sight — as well he 
might — and then went home again. The best place, too. 

Joan and her two squires rode on and on, until they 
came to Chinon, where she was, after some doubt, ad- 
mitted into the Dauphin's presence. Picking him out 
immediately from all his court, she told him that she 
came commanded by Heaven to subdue his enemies and 
conduct him to his coronation at Rheims. She also told 
him (or he pretended so afterwards, to make the greater 
impression upon his soldiers) a number of his secrets 
known only to himself, and furthermore, she said there 
was an old, old sword in the cathedral of Saint Catherine 
at Fierbois, marked with five old crosses on the blade, 
which Saint Catherine had ordered her to wear. 

Now, nobody knew anything about this old, old sword, 
but when the cathedral came to be examined — which was 
immediately done — there, sure enough, the sword was 
found! The Dauphin then required a number of grave 
priests and bishops to give him their opinion whether 
the girl derived her power from good spirits or from evil 
spirits, which they held prodigiously long debates about, 
in the course of which several learned men fell fast asleep 
and snored loudly. At last, when one gruff old gentle- 
man had said to Joan, " What language do your Voices 
speak ? " and when Joan had replied to the gruff old gen- 
tleman, " A pleasanter language than yours," they agreed 
that it was all correct, and that Joan of Arc was inspired 
from Heaven. This wonderful circumstance put new 
heart into the Dauphin's soldiers when they heard of it, 
and dispirited the English army, who took Joan for a 
witch. 

So Joan mounted horse again, and again rode on and on, 
until she came to Orleans. But she rode now, as never 
peasant girl had ridden yet. She rode upon a white war- 
horse, in a suit of glittering armor; with the old, old 
sword from the cathedral, newly burnished, in her belt; 
with a white flag carried before her, upon which were a | 
picture of God, and the words Jesus Maria. In this splen- 
did state, at the head of a great body of troops escorting 
provisions of all kinds for the starving inhabitants of 
Orleans, she appeared before that beleaguered city. 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 203 

When the people on the walls beheld her, they cried 
out : " The Maid is come ! The Maid of the Prophecy- 
is come to deliver us ! " And this, and the sight of the 
Maid fighting at the head of their men, made the French 
so bold, and made the English so fearful, that the English 
line of forts was soon broken, the troops and provisions 
were got into the town, and Orleans was saved. 

Joan, henceforth called The Maid of Orleans, re- 
mained within the walls for a few days, and caused let- 
ters to be thrown over, ordering Lord Suffolk and his 
Englishmen to depart from before the town according 
to the will of Heaven. As the English general very 
positively declined to believe that Joan knew anything 
about the will of Heaven (which did not mend the matter 
with his soldiers, for they stupidly said if she were not 
inspired she was a witch, and it was of no use to fight 
against a witch), she mounted her white war-horse again, 
and ordered her white banner to advance. 

The besiegers held the bridge, and some strong towers 
upon the bridge ; and here the Maid of Orleans attacked 
them. The fight was fourteen hours long. She planted 
a scaling ladder with her own hands, and mounted a 
tower wall, but was struck by an English arrow in the 
neck, and fell into the trench. She was carried away and 
the arrow was taken out, during which operation she 
screamed and cried with the pain, as any other girl 
might have done ; but presently she said that the Voices 
were speaking to her and soothing her to rest. After a 
while, she got up, and was again foremost in the fight. 
When the English who had seen her fall and supposed 
her to be dead, saw this, they were troubled with the 
strangest fears, and some of them cried out that they 
beheld Saint Michael on a white horse (probably Joan 
herself) fighting for the French. They lost the bridge, 
and lost the towers, and next day set their chain of forts 
on fire, and left the place. 

But as Lord Suffolk himself retired no farther than 
the town of Jargeau, which was only a few miles off, 
the Maid of Orleans besieged him there, and he was 
taken prisoner. As the white banner scaled the wall, 
she was struck upon the head with a stone, and was 
again tumbled down into the ditch ; but, she only cried 
all the more, as she lay there, " On, on, my countrymen ! 



204 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

And fear nothing, for the Lord hath delivered them into 
our hands ! " After this new success of the Maid's, 
several other fortresses and places which had previously- 
held out against the Dauphin were delivered up without 
a battle ; and at Patay she defeated the remainder of the 
English army, and set up her victorious white banner 
on a field where twelve hundred Englishmen lay dead. 

She now urged the Dauphin (who always kept out of 
the way when there was any fighting), to proceed to 
Rheims, as the first part of her mission was accomplished ; 
and to complete the whole by being crowned there. The 
Dauphin was in no particular hurry to do this, as Rheims 
was a long way off, and the English and the Duke of 
Burgundy were still strong in the country through which 
the road lay. However, they set forth, with ten thousand 
men, and again the Maid of Orleans rode on and on, upon 
her white war-horse, and in her shining armor. When- 
ever they came to a town which yielded readily, the 
soldiers believed in her; but, whenever they came to a 
town which gave them any trouble, they began to mur- 
mur that she was an impostor. The latter was particu- 
larly the case at Troyes, which finally yielded, however, 
through the persuasion of one Richard, a friar of the 
place. Friar Richard was in the old doubt about the 
Maid of Orleans, until he had sprinkled her well with 
holy water, and had also well sprinkled the threshold of 
the gate by which she came into the city. Finding that 
it made no change in her or the gate, he said, as the 
other grave old gentlemen had said, that it was all right, 
and became her great ally. 

So, at last, by dint of riding on and on, the Maid of 
Orleans, and the Dauphin, and the ten thousand some- 
times believing and sometimes unbelieving men, came to 
Rheims. And in the great cathedral of Rheims, the j 
Dauphin actually was crowned Charles the Seventh in 
a great assembly of the people. Then, the Maid, who 
with her white banner stood beside the King in that hour 
of his triumph, kneeled down upon the pavement at his 
feet, and said, with tears, that what she had been inspired 
to do, was done, and that the only recompense she asked j 
for, was, that she should now have leave to go back to 
her distant home, and her sturdily incredulous father, 
and her first simple escort the village wheelwright and 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 205 

cart-maker. But the King said " No ! " and made her 
and her family as noble as a King could, and settled upon 
her the income of a count. 

Ah ! happy had it been for the Maid of Orleans, if she 
had resumed her rustic dress that day, and had gone home 
to the little chapel and the wild hills, and had forgotten 
all these things, and had been a good man's wife, and had 
heard no stranger voices than the voices of little chil- 
dren ! 

It was not to be, and she continued helping the King 
(she did a world for him, in alliance with Friar Richard), 
and trying to improve the lives of the coarse soldiers, and 
leading a religious, an unselfish, and a modest life, herself, 
beyond any doubt. Still, many times she prayed the King 
to let her go home ; and once she even took off her bright 
armor and hung it up in a church, meaning never to wear 
it more. But, the King always won her back again — 
while she was of any use to him — and so she went on and 
on and on, to her doom. 

When the Duke of Bedford, who was a very able man, 
began to be active for England, and, by bringing the war 
back into France and by holding the Duke of Burgundy 
to his faith, to distress and disturb Charles very much, 
Charles sometimes asked the Maid of Orleans what the 
Voices said about it ? But, the Voices had become (very 
like ordinary voices in perplexed times) contradictory and 
confused, so that now they said one thing, and now said 
another, and the Maid lost credit every day. Charles 
marched on Paris, which was opposed to him, and attacked 
the suburb of Saint Honore. In this fight, being again 
struck down into the ditch, she was abandoned by the whole 
army. She lay unaided among a heap of dead, and crawled 
out how she could. Then, some of her believers went over 
to an opposition Maid, Catherine of La Rochelle, who said 
she was inspired to tell where there were treasures of 
buried money — though she never did — and then Joan 
accidentally broke the old, old sword, and others said that 
her power was broken with it. Finally, at the siege of 
Compiegne, held by the Duke of Burgundy, where she did 
valiant service, she was basely left alone in a retreat, 
though facing about and fighting to the last ; and an archer 
pulled her off her horse. 

the uproar that was made, and the thanksgivings that 



206 A CHILD'S HISTOBY OF ENGLAND. 

were sung, about the capture of this one poor country girl ! 
O the way in which she was demanded to be tried for sor- 
cery and heresy, and anything else you like, by the Inquis- 
itor-General of France, and by this great man, and by 
that great man, until it is wearisome to think of ! She 
was bought at last by the Bishop of Beauvais for ten 
thousand francs, and was shut up in her narrow prison: 
plain Joan of Arc again, and Maid of Orleans no more. 

I should never have done if I were to tell you how they 
had Joan out to examine her, and cross-examine her, and 
re-examine her, and worry her into saying anything and 
everything; and how all sorts of scholars and doctors be- 
stowed their utmost tediousness upon her. Sixteen times 
she was brought out and shut up again, and worried, and 
entrapped, and argued with, until she was heartsick of 
the dreary business. On the last occasion of this kind she 
was brought into a burial-place at Rouen, dismally deco- 
rated with a scaffold, and a stake and fagots, and the ex- 
ecutioner, and a pulpit with a friar therein, and an awful 
sermon ready. It is very affecting to know that even at 
that pass the poor girl honored the mean vermin of a 
King, who had so used her for his purposes and so aban- 
doned her; and, that while she had been regardless of re- 
proaches heaped upon herself, she spoke out courageously 
for him. 

It was natural in one so young to hold to life. To save 
her life, she signed a declaration prepared for her — signed 
it with a cross, for she couldn't write — that all her visions 
and Voices had come from the Devil. Upon her recant- 
ing the past, and protesting that she would never wear a 
man's dress in future, she was condemned to imprison- 
ment for life, " on the bread of sorrow and the water of 
affliction." 

But, on the bread of sorrow and the water of affliction, 
the visions and the Voices soon returned, It was quite 
natural that they should do so, for that kind of disease 
is much aggravated by fasting, loneliness, and anxiety of 
mind. It was not only got out of Joan that she considered 
herself inspired again, but, she was taken in a man's 
dress, which had been left — to entrap her — in her prison, 
and which she put on, in her solitude ; perhaps, in re- 
membrance of her past glories, perhaps, because the 
imaginary Voices told her, For this relapse into the 



A CHILD'S HISTOBY OF ENGLAND. 207 

sorcsry and heresy and anything else you like, she was 
sentenced to be burnt to death. And, in the market- 
place of Rouen, in the hideous dress which the monks 
had invented for such spectacles ; with priests and bishops 
sitting in a gallery looking on, though some had the 
Christian grace to go away, unable to endure the infamous 
scene; this shrieking girl — last seen amidst the smoke 
and fire, holding a crucifix between her hands ; last heard, 
calling upon Christ — was burnt to ashes. They threw 
her ashes into the river Seine ; but, they will rise against 
her murderers on the last day. 

From the moment of her capture, neither the French 
King nor one single man in all his court raised a finger 
to save her. It is no defence of them that they may have 
never really believed in her, or that they may have won 
her victories by their skill and bravery. The more they 
pretended to believe in her, the more they had caused her 
to believe in herself ; and she had ever been true to them> 
ever brave, ever nobly devoted. But, it is no wonder, 
that they, who were in all things false to themselves, 
false to one another, false to their country, false to Heaven, 
false to Earth, should be monsters of ingratitude and 
treachery to a helpless peasant girl. 

In the picturesque old town of Rouen, where weeds 
and grass grow high on the cathedral towers, and the 
venerable Norman streets are still warm tn the blessed 
sunlight though the monkish fires that once gleamed 
horribly upon them have long grown cold, there is a 
statue of Joan of Arc, in the scene of her last agony^ the 
square to which she has given its present name. I know 
some statues of modern times — even in the World's me- 
tropolis, I think — which commemorate less constancy, less 
earnestness, smaller claims upon the world's attention, 
and much greater impostors, 

Part the Third. 

Bad deeds seldom prosper, happily for mankind ; and 
the English cause gained no advantage from the cruel 
death of Joan of Arc. For a long time, the war went 
heavily on. The Duke of Bedford died ; the alliance with 
the Duke of Burgundy was broken ; and Lord Talbot be- 
came a great general on the English side in France. But ? 



208 A CHILD'S HISTOBY OF ENGLAND. 

two of the consequences of wars are, Famine — because 
the people cannot peacefully cultivate the ground — and 
Pestilence, which comes of want, misery, and suffering. 
Both these horrors broke out in both countries, and lasted 
for two wretched years. Then, the war went on again, 
and came by slow degrees to be so badly conducted by 
the English government, that, within twenty years from 
the execution of the Maid of Orleans, of all the great 
French conquests, the town of Calais alone remained in 
English hands. 

While these victories and defeats were taking place in 
the course of time, many strange things happened at 
home. The young King, as he grew up, proved to be 
very unlike his great father, and showed himself a miser- 
able puny creature. There was no harm in him — he had 
a great aversion to shedding blood : which was something 
—but, he was a weak, silly, helpless young man, and a 
mere shuttlecock to the great lordly battledoors about the 
Court. 

Of these battledoors, Cardinal Beaufort, a relation of 
the King, and the Duke of Gloucester, were at first the 
most powerful. The Duke of Gloucester had a wife, who 
was nonsensically accused of practising witchcraft to 
cause the King's death and lead to her husband's coming 
to the throne, he being the next heir. She was charged 
with having, by the help of a ridiculous old woman named 
Margery (who was called a witch), made a little waxen doll 
in the king's likeness, and put it before a slow fire that it 
might gradually melt away. It was supposed, in such 
cases, that the death of the person whom the doll was 
made to represent, was sure to happen. Whether the 
duchess was as ignorant as the rest of them, and really 
did make such a doll with such an intention, I don't 
know ; but, you and I know very well that she might 
have made a thousand dolls, if she had been stupid 
enough, and might have melted them all, without hurt- 
ing the King or anybody else. However, she was tried 
for it, and so was old Margery, and so was one of the 
duke's chaplains, who was charged with having assisted 
them. Both he and Margery were put to death, and the 
duchess, after being taken, on foot and bearing a lighted 
candle, three times round the City as a penance, was im- 
prisoned for life, The Puke, himself, took all this pretty 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 209 

quietly, and made as little stir about the matter as if he 
were rather glad to be rid of the duchess. 

But, he was not destined to keep himself out of trouble 
long. The royal shuttlecock being three and twenty, 
the battledoors were very anxious to get him married. 
The Duke of Gloucester wanted him to marry a daughter 
of the Count of Armagnac ; but, the Cardinal and the 
Earl of Suffolk were all for Margaret, the daughter of 
the King of Sicily, who they knew was a resolute am- 
bitious woman and would govern the King as she chose. 
To make friends with this lady, the Earl of Suffolk, who 
went over to arrange the match, consented to accept 
her for the King's wife without any fortune, and even 
to give up the two most valuable possessions England 
then had in France. So, the marriage was arranged, on 
terms very advantageous to the lady ; and Lord Suffolk 
brought her to England, and she was married at West- 
minster. On what pretence this queen and her party 
charged the Duke of Gloucester with high treason with- 
in a couple of years it is impossible to make out, the 
matter is so confused ; but, they pretended that the King's 
life was in danger, and they took the duke prisoner. A 
fortnight afterwards, he was found dead in bed (they 
said), and his body was shown to the people, and Lord 
Suffolk came in for the best part of his estates. You 
know by this time how strangely liable state prisoners 
were to sudden death. 

If Cardinal Beaufort had any hand in this matter, it 
did him no good, for he died within six weeks ; think- 
ing it very hard and curious— at eighty years old !— that 
he could not live to be Pope. 

This was the time when England had completed her 
loss of all her great French conquests. The people 
charged the loss principally upon the Earl of Suffolk, now 
a duke, who had made those easy terms about the Royal 
marriage, and who they believed, had even been bought 
by France. So he was impeached as a traitor, on a great 
number of charges, but chiefly on accusations of having 
aided the French King, and of designing to make his 
own son King of England. The Commons and the 
people being violent against him, the King was made 
(by his friends) to interpose to save him, by banishing 
him for five years s and proroguing the Parliament. The 



210 A CHILD'S BISTORT OF m&LAtffi. 

duke had much ado to escape from a London mob, two 
thousand strong, who lay in wait for him in St. Giles's 
Fields ; but he got down to his own estates in Suffolk, 
and sailed away from Ipswich. Sailing across the Chan- 
nel, he sent into Calais to know if he might land there ; 
but, they kept his boat and men in the harbor, until an 
English ship, carrying a hundred and fifty men and 
called the Nicholas of the Tower, came alongside his 
little vessel, and ordered him on board. "Welcome, 
traitor, as men say," was the captain's grim and not very 
respectful salutation. He was kept on board, a prisoner, 
for eight and forty hours, and then a small boat appeared 
rowing towards the ship. As this boat came nearer,it was 
seen to have in it a block, a rusty sword, and an execu- 
tioner in a black mask. The duke was handed down into 
it, and here his head was cut off with six strokes of the 
rusty sword. Then, the little boat rowed away to Dover 
beach, where the body was cast out, and left until the 
duchess claimed it. By whom, high in authority, this 
murder was committed, has never appeared. No one 
was ever punished for it. 

There now arose in Kent an Irishman, who gave him- 
self the name of Mortimer, but whose real name was 
Jack Cade. Jack, in imitation of Wat Tyler, though he 
was a very different and inferior sort of man, addressed 
the Kentish men upon their wrongs, occasioned by the 
bad government of England, among so many battledoors 
and such a poor shuttlecock ; and the Kentish men rose up 
to the number of twenty thousand. Their place of as- 
sembly was Blackheath where, headed by Jack, they put 
forth two papers, which they called "The Complaint of 
the Commons of Kent," and " The Requests of the Cap- 
tain of the Great Assembly in Kent." They then retired 
to Sevenoaks. The royal army coming up with them 
here, they beat it and killed their general. Then, Jack 
dressed himself in the dead general's armor, and led his 
men to London. 

Jack passed into the City from Southwark, over the 
bridge, and entered it in triumph, giving the strictest 
orders to his men not to plunder. Having made a show 
of his forces there, while the citizens looked on quietly, 
he went back into Southwark in good order, and passed 
the night. Next day he came back again, having got 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 2il 

hold in the mean time of Lord Say, an unpopular noble- 
man. Says Jack to the Lord Mayor and judges : " Will 
you be so good as to make a tribunal in Guildhall, and 
try me this nobleman ? " The court being hastily made, 
he was found guilty, and Jack and his men cut his head 
off on Cornhill. They also cut off the head of his son-in- 
law, and then went back in good order to Southwark 
again. 

But, although the citizens could bear the beheading of 
an unpopular lord, they could not bear to have their 
houses pillaged. And it did so happen that Jack, after 
dinner — perhaps he had drunk a little too much — began 
to plunder the house where he lodged ; upon which, of 
course, his men began to imitate him. Wherefore, the 
Londoners took counsel with Lord Scales, who had a 
thousand soldiers in the Tower ; and defended London 
Bridge, and kept Jack and his people out. This advan- 
tage gained, it was resolved by divers great men to divide 
Jack's army in the old way, by making a great many 
promises on behalf of the state, that they never intended 
to be performed. This did divide them; some of Jack's 
men saying that they ought to take the conditions which 
were offered, and others saying that they ought not, for 
they were only a snare; some going home at once ; others 
staying where they were; and all doubting and quarrel- 
ling among themselves. 

Jack, who was in two minds about fighting or accept- 
ing a pardon, and who indeed did both, saw at last that 
there was nothing to expect from his men, and that it 
was very likely some of them would deliver him up and 
get a reward of a thousand marks, which was offered for 
his apprehension. So, after they had travelled and quar- 
relled all the way from Southwark to Blackheath, and 
from Blackheath to Rochester, he mounted a good horse 
and galloped away into Sussex. But, there galloped 
after him, on a better horse, one Alexander Iden, who 
came up with him, had a hard fight with him, and killed 
him. Jack's head was set aloft on London Bridge, with 
the face looking towards Blackheath, where he had 
raised his flag; and Alexander Iden got the thousand 
marks. 

It is supposed by some, that the Duke of York, who 
had been removed from a high post abroad through the 



212 A 0B1L&8 HISTORY OF m&LANl). 

Queen's influence, and sent out of the way, to govern 
Ireland, was at the bottom of this rising of Jack and his 
men, because he wanted to trouble the Government. He 
claimed (though not yet publicly) to have a better right 
to the throne than Henry of Lancaster, as one of the 
family of the Earl of March, whom Henry the Fourth 
had set aside. Touching this claim, which, being through 
female relationship, was not according to the usual de- 
scent, it is enough to say that Henry the Fourth was the 
free choice of the people and the Parliament, and that his 
family had now reigned undisputed for sixty years. 
The memory of Henry the Fifth was so famous and the 
English people loved it so much, that the Duke of York's 
claim would, perhaps, never have been thought of (it would 
have been so hopeless) but for the unfortunate circum- 
stance of the present King's being by this time quite an 
idiot, and the country very ill-governed. These two 
circumstances gave the Duke of York a power he could 
not otherwise have had. 

Whether the Duke knew anything of Jack Cade, or not, 
he came over from Ireland while Jack's head was on 
London Bridge ; being secretly advised that the Queen 
was setting up his enemy, the Duke of Somerset, against 
him. He went to Westminster, at the head of four 
thousand men, and on his knees before the King, repre- 
sented to him the bad state of the country, and petitioned 
him to summon a Parliament to consider it. This the 
King promised. When the Parliament was summoned, 
the Duke of York accused the Duke of Somerset, and 
the Duke of Somerset accused the Duke of York ; and, 
both in and out of Parliament, the followers of each party 
were full of violence and hatred towards the other. At 
length the Duke of York put himself at the head of a 
large force of his tenants, and, in arms, demanded the 
reformation of the Government. Being shut out of Lon- 
don, he encamped at Dartford, and the royal army en- 
camped at Blackheath. According as either side tri- 
umphed, the Duke of York was arrested, or the Duke of 
Somerset was arrested. The trouble ended, for the mo- 
ment, in the Duke of York renewing his oath of alle- 
giance, and going in peace to one of his own castles. 

Half a year afterwards the Queen gave birth to a son, 
who was very ill received by the people, and not believed 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 213 

to be the son of the King. It shows the Duke of York 
to have been a moderate man, unwilling to involve Eng- 
land in new troubles, that he did not take advantage of 
the general discontent at this time, but really acted for 
the public good. He was made a member of the cabinet, 
and the King being now so much worse that he could not 
be carried about and shown to the people with any de- 
cency, the duke was made Lord Protector of the kingdom 
until the King should recover, or the Prince should come 
of age. At the same time the Duke of Somerset was com- 
mitted to the Tower. So, now the Duke of Somerset was 
down, and the Duke of York was up. By the end of the 
year, however, the King recovered his memory and some 
spark of sense ; upon w^hich the Queen used her power — 
which recovered with him — to get the Protector disgraced, 
and her favorite released. So now the Duke of York was 
down, and the Duke of Somerset was up. 

These ducal ups and downs gradually separated the 
whole nation into the two parties of York and Lancaster, 
and led to those terrible civil wars long known as the 
Wars of the Red and White Roses, because the red rose 
was the badge of the House of Lancaster, and the white 
rose was the badge of the House of York. 

The Duke of York, joined by some other powerful no- 
blemen of the White Rose party, and leading a small 
army, met the King with another small army at St. 
Alban's and demanded that the Duke of Somerset should 
be given up. The poor King, being made to say in an- 
swer that he would sooner die, was instantly attacked. 
The Duke of Somerset was killed, and the King himself 
was wounded in the neck, and took refuge in the house 
of a poor tanner. Whereupon, the Duke of York went 
to him, led him with great submission to the Abbey, and 
said he was very sorry for what had happened. Having 
now the King in his possession, he got a Parliament sum, 
moned and himself once more made Protector, but, only 
for a few months ; for, on the King getting a little bet 
ter again, the Queen and her party got him into their pos- 
session, and disgraced the Duke once more. So, now the 
Duke of York was down again. 

Some of the best men in power, seeing the danger of 
these constant changes, tried even then to prevent the 
Red and White Rose Wars. They brought about a great 



2i4 A cbIl&s tits four of England. 

council in London between the two parties. The White 
Roses assembled in Blackfriars, the Red Roses in White- 
friars ; and some good priests communicated between 
them, and made the proceedings known at evening to 
the King and the judges. They ended in a peaceful 
agreement that there should be no more quarrelling ; and 
there was a great royal procession to St. Paul's in which 
the Queen walked arm in arm with her old enemy, the 
Duke of York, to show the people how comfortable they 
all were. This state of peace lasted half a year, when a 
dispute between the Earl of Warwick (one of the Duke's 
powerful friends) and some of the King's servants at 
Court, led to an attack upon that Earl — who was a White 
Rose — and to a sudden breaking out of all the old ani- 
mosities. So, here were greater ups and downs than ever. 

There were even greater ups and downs than these, 
soon after. After various battles, the Duke of York fled 
to Ireland, and his son the Earl of March to Calais, with 
their friends the Earls of Salisbury and Warwick ; and a 
Parliament was held declaring them all traitors. Little 
the worse for this, the Earl of Warwick presently came 
back, landed in Kent, was joined by the Archbishop of 
Canterbury and other powerful noblemen and gentlemen, 
engaged the King's forces at Northampton, signally de- 
feated them, and took the King himself prisoner, who was 
found in his tent. Warwick would have been glad, I dare 
say, to have taken the Queen and Prince too, but they 
escaped into Wales and thence into Scotland. 

The King was carried by the victorious force straight 
to London, and made to call a new Parliament, which 
immediately declared that the Duke of York and those 
other noblemen were not traitors, but excellent subjects. 
Then, back comes the Duke from Ireland at the head of 
five hundred horsemen, rides from London to Westmin- 
ster, and enters the House of Lords. There, he laid his 
hand upon the cloth of gold which covered the empty 
throne, as if he had half a mind to sit down in it — but he 
did not. On the Archbishop of Canterbury asking him 
if he would visit the King, who was in the palace close 
by, he replied, " I know no one in this country, my lord, 
who ought not to visit me." None of the lords present, 
spoke a single word ; so, the duke went out as he had 
come in, established himself royally in the King's palace, 



A CB1LPS MISTORT OF ENGLAND. 215 

and, six days afterwards, sent in to the Lords a formal 
statement of his claim to the throne. The lords went to 
the King on this momentous subject, and after a great 
deal of discussion, in which the judges and the other law 
officers were afraid to give an opinion on either side, the 
question was compromised. It was agreed that the pres- 
ent King should retain the crown for his life, and that 
it should then pass to the Duke of York and his heirs. 

But, the resolute Queen, determined on asserting her 
son's rights, would hear of no such thing. She came 
from Scotland to the north of England, where several 
powerful lords armed in her cause. The Duke of York, 
for his part, set off with some five thousand men, a little 
time before Christmas Day, one thousand four hundred 
and sixty, to give her battle. He lodged at Sandal Castle, 
near Wakefield, and the Red Roses defied him to come 
out on Wakefield Green, and fight them then and there. 
His generals said, he had best wait until his gallant son, 
the Earl of March, came up with his power ; but, he was 
determined to accept the challenge. He did so, in an 
evil hour. He was hotly pressed on all sides, two thou- 
sand of his men lay dead on Wakefield Green, and he 
himself was taken prisoner. They set him down in mock 
state on an anthill, and twisted grass about his head, and 
pretended to pay court to him on their knees, saying, " O 
King, without a kingdom, and Prince without a people, 
we hope your gracious Majesty is very well and happy ! " 
They did worse than this ; they cut his head off, and 
handed it on a pole to the Queen, who laughed with de- 
light when she saw it (you recollect their walking so 
religiously and comfortably to St. Paul's !), and had it 
fixed, with a paper crown upon its head, on the walls 
of York. The Earl of Salisbury lost his head, too ; and 
the Duke of York's second son, a handsome boy who was 
flying with his tutor over Wakefield Bridge, was stabbed 
in the heart by a murderous lord — Lord Clifford by name 
— whose father had been killed by the White Roses in the 
fight at St. Alban's. There was awful sacrifice of life in 
this battle, for no quarter was given, and the Queen was 
wild for revenge. When men unnaturally fight against 
their own countrymen, they are always observed to be 
more unnaturally cruel and filled with rage than they are 
against any other enemy. 



216 A CHILD'S msTOBY OF ENGLAND. 

But, Lord Clifford had stabbed the second son of the 
Duke of York — not the first. The eldest son, Edward 
Earl of March, was at Gloucester ; and, vowing vengeance 
for the death of his father, his brother, and their faithful 
friends, he began to march against the Queen. He had 
to turn and fight a great body of Welsh and Irish first, 
who worried his advance. These he defeated in a great 
fight, at Mortimer's Cross, near Hereford, where he be- 
headed a number of the Red Roses taken in battle, in 
retaliation for the beheading of the White Roses at Wake- 
field. The Queen had the next turn of beheading. Hav- 
ing moved towards London, and falling in, between St. 
Alban's and Barnet, with the Earl of Warwick and the 
Duke of Norfolk, White Roses both, who were there 
with an army to oppose her, and had got the King with 
them ; she defeated them with great loss, and struck off 
the heads of two prisoners of note, who were in the King's 
tent with him, and to whom the King had promised his 
protection. Her triumph, however, was very short. She 
had no treasure, and her army subsisted by plunder. 
This caused them to be hated and dreaded by the people, 
and particularly by the London people, who were wealthy. 
As soon as the Londoners heard that Edward, Earl of 
March, united with the Earl of Warwick, was advancing 
towards the city, they refused to send the Queen sup- 
plies, and made a great rejoicing. 

The Queen and her men retreated with all speed, and 
Edward and Warwick came on, greeted with loud accla- 
mations on every side. The courage, beauty, and virtues 
of young Edward could not be sufficiently praised by the 
whole people. He rode into London like a conqueror, and 
met with an enthusiastic welcome. A few days afterwards, 
Lord Falconbridge and the Bishop of Exeter assembled 
the citizens in St. John's Field, Clerkenwell, and asked 
them if they would have Henry of Lancaster for their 
King? To this they all roared, "No, no, no!" and 
" King Edward ! King Edward ! " Then, said those noble- 
men, would they love and serve young Edward? To this 
they all cried, " Yes, yes ! " and threw up their caps and 
clapped their hands, and cheered tremendously. 

Therefore, it was declared that by joining the Queen and 
not protecting those two prisoners of note, Henry of Lan- 
caster had forfeited the crown ; and Edward of York was 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 211 

proclaimed King. He made a great speech to the applaud- 
ing people at Westminster, and sat down as sovereign of 
England on that throne, on the golden covering of which 
his father — worthy of a better fate than the bloody axe 
which cut the thread of so many lives in England, through 
so many years — had laid his hand. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE FOURTH. 

King Edward the Fourth was not quite twenty-one 
years of age when he took that unquiet seat upon the 
throne of England. The Lancaster party, the Red Roses, 
were then assembling in great numbers near York, and it 
was necessary to give them battle instantly. But, the 
stout Earl of Warwick leading for the young King, and the 
young King himself closely following him, and the Eng- 
lish people crowding to the Royal standard, the White and 
the Red Roses met, on a wild March day when the snow 
was falling heavily, at Towton ; and there such a furious 
battle raged between them, that the total loss amounted to 
forty thousand men — all Englishmen, righting, upon Eng- 
lish ground, against one another. The young King gained 
the day, took down the heads of his father and brother 
from the walls of York, and put up the heads of some of 
the most famous noblemen engaged in the battle on the 
other side. Then, he went to London and was crowned 
with great splendor. 

A new Parliament met. No fewer than one hundred 
and fifty of the principal noblemen and gentlemen on the 
Lancaster side were declared traitors, and the King — who 
had very little humanity, though he was handsome in 
person and agreeable in manners — resolved to do all he, 
could, to pluck up the Red Rose root and branch. 

Queen Margaret, however, was still active for her young 
I son. She obtained help from Scotland and from ISTor- 
j mandy, and took several important English castles. But, 
Warwick soon retook them ; the Queen lost all her treas- 
\ jre on. boar4 ship in a great storm ; and both she and 



218 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

her son suffered great misfortunes. Once, in the winter 
weather, as they were riding through a forest, they were 
attacked and plundered by a party of robbers ; and when 
they had escaped from these men and were passing alone 
and on foot through a thick dark part of the wood, they 
came, all at once, upon another robber. So the Queen, 
with a stout heart, took the little Prince by the hand, and 
going straight up to that robber, said to him, " My friend, 
this is the young son of your lawful King! I confide him 
to your care." The robber was surprised, but took the boy 
in his arms, and faithfully restored him and his mother 
to their friends. In the end, the Queen's soldiers being 
beaten and dispersed, she went abroad again, and kept 
quiet for the present. 

Now, all this time, the deposed King Henry was con- 
cealed by a Welsh knight, who kept him close in his 
castle. But, next year, the Lancaster party recovering 
their spirits, raised a large body of men, and called him 
out of his retirement, to put him at their head. They 
were joined by some powerful noblemen who had sworn 
fidelity to the new King, but who were ready, as usual, 
to break their oaths, whenever they thought there was 
anything to be got by it. One of the worst things in the 
history of the war of the Red and White Roses, is the 
ease with which these noblemen, who should have set 
an example of honor to the people, left either side as they 
took slight offence, or were disappointed in their greedy 
expectations, and joined the other. Well ! Warwick's 
brother soon beat the Lancastrians, and the false noble- 
men, being taken, were beheaded without a moment's 
loss of time. The deposed King had a narrow escape ; 
three of his servants were taken, and one of them bore 
his cap of estate, which was set with pearls and embroid- 
ered with two golden crowns. However, the head to 
which the cap belonged, got safely into Lancashire, and 
lay pretty quietly there (the people in the secret being 
very true) for more than a year. At length, an old monk 
gave such intelligence as led to 'Henry's being taken 
while he was sitting at dinner in a place called Wadding- 
ton Hall. He was immediately sent to London, and met 
at Islington by the Earl of Warwick, by whose directions 
he was put upon a horse, with his legs tied under it, and 
paraded three times round the pillory. Then, he was. 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 219 

carried off to the Tower, where they treated him well 
enough. 

The White Rose being so triumphant, the young King 
abandoned himself entirely to pleasure, and led a jovial 
life. But, thorns were springing up under his bed of 
roses, as he soon found out. For, having been privately 
married to Elizabeth Woodville, a young widow lady, 
very beautiful and very captivating ; and at last resolv- 
ing to make his secret known, and to declare her his 
Queen ; he gave some offence to the Earl of Warwick, 
who was usually called the King-Maker, because of his 
power and influence, and because of his having lent such 
great help to placing Edward on the throne. This offence 
was not lessened by the jealousy with which the Nevil 
family (the Earl of Warwick's) regarded the promotion 
of the Woodville family. For, the young Queen was so 
bent on providing for her relations, that she made her 
father an earl and a great officer of state ; married her 
five sisters to young noblemen of the highest rank ; and 
provided for her younger brother, a young man of twenty, 
by marrying him to an immensely rich old duchess of 
eighty. The Earl of Warwick took all this pretty gra- 
ciously for a man of his proud temper, until the question 
arose to whom the King's sister, Margaret, should be 
married. The Earl of Warwick said, " To one of the 
French King's sons," and was allowed to go over to the 
French King to make friendly proposals for tnat pur- 
pose, and to hold all manner of friendly interviews with 
him. But, while he was so engaged, the Woodville party 
married the young lady to the Duke of Burgundy ! Upon 
this he came back in great rage and scorn, and shut him- 
self up discontented, in his Castle of Middleham. 

A reconciliation, though not a very sincere one, was 
patched up between the Earl of Warwick and the King, 
and lasted until the Earl married his daughter, against 
the King's wishes, to the Duke of Clarence. While the 
marriage was being celebrated at Calais, the people in the 
north of England, where the influence of the Nevil family 
was strongest,, broke out into rebellion; their complaint 
was, that England was oppressed and plundered by the 
Woodville family, whom they demanded to have removed 
from power. As they were joined by great numbers of 
people, and as they openly declared that they were sup* 



220 A CHILD'S HISTOBY OF ENGLAND. 

ported by the Earl of Warwick, the King did not know 
what to do. At last, as he wrote to the earl beseeching 
his aid, he and his new son-in-law came over to England, 
and began to arrange the business by shutting the King 
up in Middlehani Castle in the safe keeping of the Arch- 
bishop of York ; so England was not only in the strange 
position of having two kings at once, but they were both 
prisoners at the same time. 

Even as yet, however, the King-Maker was so far true 
to the King, that he dispersed a new rising of the Lan- 
castrians, took their leader prisoner, and brought him to 
the King, who ordered him to be immediately executed. 
He presently allowed the King to return to London, and 
there innumerable pledges of forgiveness and friendship 
were exchanged between them, and between the Nevils 
and the Woodvilles; the King's eldest daughter was 
promised in marriage to the head of the Nevil family ; 
and more, friendly oaths were sworn, and more friendly 
promises made, than this book would hold. 

They lasted about three months. At the end of that 
time, the Archbishop of York made a feast for the King, 
the Earl of Warwick, and the Duke of Clarence, at his 
house, the Moor, in Hertfordshire. The King was wash- 
ing his hands before supper, when some one whispered 
him that a body of a hundred men were lying in ambush 
outside the house. Whether this were true or untrue, 
the King took fright, mounted his horse, and rode through 
the dark night to Windsor Castle. Another reconcilia- 
tion was patched up between him and the King-Maker, 
but it was a short one, and it was the last. A new rising 
took place in Lincolnshire, and the King marched to re- 
press it. Having done so, he proclaimed that both the 
Earl of Warwick and the Duke of Clarence were traitors, 
who had secretly assisted it, and who had been prepared 
publicly to join it, on the following day. In these danger- 
ous circumstances they both took ship and sailed away 
to the French court. 

And here a meeting took place between the Earl of 
Warwick and his old enemy ,the Dowager Queen Margaret, 
through whom his father had had his head struck off, 
and to whom he had been a bitter foe. But, now, when 
he said that he had done with the ungrateful and per- 
fidious Edward of York, and that henceforth he devoted 



A CHILD'S HISTOBY OF ENGLAND, 221 

himself to the restoration of the House of Lancaster, 
either in the person of her husband or of her little son, 
she embraced him as if he had ever been her dearest 
friend. She did more than that ; she married her son to 
his second daughter, the Lady Anne. However agreeable 
this marriage was to the two new friends, it was very dis- 
agreeable to the Duke of Clarence, who perceived that his 
father-in-law, the King-Maker, would never make him 
King now. So, being but a weak-minded young traitor 
possessed of very little worth or sense, he readily listened 
to an artful court lady sent over for the purpose, and 
promised to turn traitor once more, and go over to his 
brother, King Edward, when a fitting opportunity should 
come. 

The Earl of Warwick, knowing nothing of this, soon 
redeemed his promise to the Dowager Queen Margaret, 
by invading England and landing at Plymouth, where he 
instantly proclaimed King Henry, and summoned all 
Englishmen between the ages of sixteen and sixty, to 
join his banner. Then, with his army increasing as he 
marched along, he went northward, and came so near 
King Edward, who was in that part of the country, that 
Edward, had to ride hard for it to the coast of Norfolk, 
and thence to get away in such ships as he could find, to 
Holland. Thereupon, the triumphant King-Maker and 
his false son-in-law, the Duke of Clarence, went to London, 
took the old King out of the Tower, and walked him in a 
great procession to Saint Paul's Cathedral with the crown 
upon his head. This did not improve the temper of the 
Duke of Clarence, who saw himself farther off from being 
King than ever; but he kept his secret, and said nothing. 
The Nevil family were restored to all their honors and 
glories, and the Woodvilles and the rest were disgraced. 
The King-Maker less sanguinary than the King, shed no 
blood except that of the Earl of Worcester, who had been 
so cruel to the people as to have gained the title of the 
Butcher. Him they caught hidden in a tree, and him 
they tried and executed. No other death stained the King- 
Maker's triumph. 

To dispute this triumph, back came King Edward again, 
next year, landing at Ravenspnr, coming on to York, 
causing alibis men to cry "Long live King Henry ! " and 
swearing on the altar, without a blusttj that he came to 



222 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

lay no claim to the crown. Now was the time for the 
Duke of Clarence, who ordered his men to assume the 
White Rose, and declare for his brother. The Marquis 
of Montague, though the Earl of Warwick's brother, also 
declining to fight against King Edward, he went on suc- 
cessfully to London, where the Archbishop of York let 
him into the City, and where the people made great dem- 
onstrations in his favor. For this they had four reasons. 
Firstly, there were great numbers of the King's adherents 
hiding in the City and ready to break out; secoiHily, the 
King owed them a great deal of money, which they could 
never hope to get if he were unsuccessful ; thirdly, there 
was a young prince to inherit the crown ; and fourthly, 
the King was gay and handsome, and more popular than 
a better man might have been with the City ladies. After 
a stay of only two days with these worthy supporters, 
the King marched out to Barnet Common, to give the 
Earl of Warwick battle. And now it was to be seen, for 
the last time, whether the King or the King-Maker was 
to carry the day. 

While the battle was yet pending, the faint-hearted 
Duke of Clarence began to repent, and sent over secret 
messages to his father-in-law, offering his services in 
mediation with the King. But, the Earl of Warwick 
disdainfully rejected them, and replied that Clarence was 
false and perjured, and that he would settle the quarrel 
by the sword. The battle began at four o'clock in the 
morning and lasted until ten, and during the greater part 
of the time it was fought in a thick mist — absurdly sup- 
posed to be raised by a magician. The loss of life was 
very great, for the hatred was strong on both sides. 
The King-Maker was defeated, and the King triumphed. 
Both the Earl of Warwick and his brother were slain, 
and their bodies lay in St. Paul's for some days, as a 
spectacle to the people. 

Margaret's spirit was not broken even by this great 
blow. Within five days she was in arms again, and 
raised her standard in Bath, whence she set off with her 
army, to try and join Lord Pembroke, who had a force in 
Wales. But, the King, coming up with her outside the 
town of Tewkesbury, and ordering his brother, the Duke 
of Gloucester, who was a brave soldier, to attack her 
men v she sustained an entire defeat, and was taken pris- 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 223 

oner, together with her son, now only eighteen years of 
age. The conduct of the King to this poor youth was 
worthy of his cruel character. He ordered him to be led 
into his tent. "And what," said he, "brought you to 
England?'' — "I came to England," replied the pris- 
oner, with a spirit which a man of spirit might have 
admired in a captive, "to recover my father's kingdom, 
which descended to him as his right, and from him de- 
scends to me, as mine." The King, drawing off his iron 
gauntlet, struck him with it in the face ; and the Duke 
of Clarence and some other lords, who were there, drew 
their noble swords, and killed him. 

His mother survived him, a prisoner, for five years ; 
after her ransom by the King of France, she survived for 
six years more. Within three weeks of this murder, 
Henry died one of those convenient sudden deaths which 
were so common in the Tower ; in plainer words, he was 
murdered by the King's order. 

Having no particular excitement on his hands after this 
great defeat of the Lancaster party, and being perhaps de- 
sirous to get rid of some of his fat (for he was now getting 
too corpulent to be handsome) the King thought of mak- 
ing war on France. As he wanted more money for this 
purpose than the Parliament could give him, though ';hey 
were usually ready enough for war, he invented a new 
way of raising it by sending for the principal citizens of 
London, and telling them, with a grave face, that he was 
very much in want of cash, and would take it very kind 
in them if they would lend him some. It being impos- 
sible for them safely to refuse, they complied, and the 
moneys thus forced from them were" called — no doubt to 
the great amusement of the King and the Court — as if 
they were free gifts, " Benevolences." What with grants 
from Parliament, and what with Benevolences, the King 
raised an army and passed over to Calais. As nobody 
wanted war, however, the French King made proposals 
of peace, which were accepted, and a truce was concluded 
for seven long years. The proceedings between the 
Kings of France and England on this occasion were very 
friendly, very splendid, and very distrustful. They 
finished with a meeting between the two Kings, on a tem- 
porary bridge over the river Somme, where they embraced 
through two holes in a strong wooden grating like a 



224 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

lion's cage, and made several bows and fine speeches to 
one another. 

It was time, now, that the Duke of Clarence should be 
punished for his treacheries ; and Fate had his punish- 
ment in store. He was, probably, not trusted by the 
King — for who could trust him who knew him ! — and he 
had certainly a powerful opponent in his brother Richard, 
Duke of Gloucester, who, being avaricious, and ambitious, 
wanted to marry that widowed daughter of the Earl of 
Warwick's who had been espoused to the deceased young 
Prince, at Calais. Clarence, who wanted all the family 
wealth for himself, secreted this lady, whom Richard found 
disguised as a servant in the City of London, and whom he 
married; arbitrators appointed by the King, then divided 
the property between the brothers. This led to ill-will 
and mistrust between them. Clarence's wife dying, and 
he wishing to make another marriage which was obnox- 
ious to the King, his ruin was hurried by that means, 
too. At first, the Court struck at his retainers and de- 
pendents, and accused some of them of magic and witch- 
craft, and similar nonsense. Successful against this 
small game, it then mounted to the Duke himself, who was 
impeached by his brother the King, in person, on a variety 
of such charges. He was found guilty, and sentenced to 
be publicly executed. He never was publicly executed, 
but he met his death somehow, in the Tower, and, no 
doubt, through some agency of the King or his brother 
Gloucester, or both. It was supposed at the time that 
he was told to choose the manner of his death, and that 
he chose to be drowned in a butt of Malrnsey wine. I 
hope the story may be true, for it would have been a 
becoming death for such a miserable creature. 

The King survived him some five years. He died in 
the forty-second year of his life, and the twenty-third of 
his reign. He had a very good capacity and some good 
points, but lie was selfish, careless, sensual and cruel, 
Ht) was a favorite with the people for his showy manners ; 
and the peopla were a good example to him in the con- 
stancy of their attachment. He was penitent on his 
death bed for his " benevolences," and other extortions, and 
ordered restitution to be marie to the people who had suf- 
fered from them, He also called about his bed the enriched 
members of the Woodville family, and the proud iord^ 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF MNGLANR 225 

whose honors were of older date, and endeavored to 
reconcile them, for the sake of the peaceful succession of 
his son and the tranquillity of England. 



CHAPTER XXIV, 

ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE FIFTH* 

The late King's eldest son, the Prince of Wales, 
called Edward alter him, was only thirteen years of age 
at his father's death. He was at Ludlow Castle with his 
uncle, the Earl of Rivers. The prince's brother, the Duke 
of York, only eleven years of age, was in London with his 
mother. The boldest, most crafty, and most dreaded 
nobleman in England at that time was their uncle Richard, 
Duke of Gloucester, and everybody wondered how the 
two poor boys would fare with such an uncle for a friend 
or a foe. 

The Queen, their mother, being exceedingly uneasy 
about this, was anxious that instructions should be sent 
to Lord Rivers to raise an army to escort the young King 
safely to London. But, Lord Hastings, who w r as of the 
Court party opposed to the Woodvilles, and who disliked 
the thought of giving them that power, argued against 
the proposal, and obliged the Queen to be satisfied with 
an escort of two thousand horse. The Duke of Gloucester 
did nothing, at first, to justify suspicion. He came from 
Scotland (where he was commanding an army) to York", 
and was there the first to swear allegiance to his nephew. 
He then wrote a condoling letter to the Queen-Mother, 
and set off to be present at the coronation in London. 

Now, the young King, journeying towards London too, 
with Lord Rivers and Lord Gray, came to Stony Strat- 
ford, as his uncle came to Northampton, about ten miles 
distant ; and when those two lords heard that the Duke 
of Gloucester was so near, they proposed to the young 
King that they should go hack and greet him in his name. 
The boy being very willing that they should do so, they 
rode off and were received with great friendliness, and 
asked by the Duke of Gloucester to stay and dine with 
him. In the evening, while they were merry together, 



226 A CHILD'S EI8T0BT OF ENGLAND. 

up came the Duke of Buckingham with three hundred 
horsemen ; and next morning the two lords and the two 
dukes, and the three hundred horsemen, rode away 
together to rejoin the King. Just as they were entering 
Stony Stratford, the Duke of Gloucester, checking his 
horse, turned suddenly on the two lords, charged them 
with alienating from him the affections of his. sweet 
nephew, and caused them to be arrested by the three 
hundred horsemen and taken back. Then, he and the 
Duke of Buckingham went straight to the King (whom 
they had now in their power), to whom they made a show 
of kneeling down, and offering great love and submission ; 
and then they ordered his attendants to disperse, and 
took him, alone with them, to Northampton. 

A few days afterwards they conducted him to London, 
and lodged him in the Bishop's Palace. But, he did not 
remain there long ; for the Duke of Buckingham with a 
tender face made a speech expressing how anxious he 
was for the Royal boy's safety, and how much safer he 
would be in the Tower until his coronation, than he could 
be anywhere else. So, to the Tower he was taken, very 
carefully, and the Duke of Gloucester was named Pro- 
tector of the State. 

Although Gloucester had proceeded thus far with a 
very smooth countenance—and although he was a clever 
man, fair of speech, and not ill-looking^ in spite of one of 
his shoulders being something higher than the other— 
and although he had come into the City riding bareheaded 
at the King's side, and looking very fond of "him— he had 
made the King's mother more uneasy yet ; and when the 
Royal boy was taken to the Tower, she became so alarmed 
that she took sanctuary in Westminster with her five 
daughters. 

Nor did she do this without reason, for, the Duke of 
Gloucester, rinding that the lords who were opposed to 
the Woodville family were faithful to the young King 
nevertheless, quickly resolved to strike a blow for him- 
self. Accordingly, while those lords met in council at 
the Tower, he and those who were in his interest met in 
separate council at his own residence, Crosby Palace, in 
Bishopsgate Street. Being at last quite prepared, he one 
day appeared unexpectedly at the council in the Tower, 
and appeared to be very jocular and merry. He was 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND* 227 

particularly gay with the Bishop of Ely: praising the 
strawberries that grew in his garden on Holborn Hill, 
and asking him to have some gathered that he might eat 
them at dinner. The Bishop, quite proud of the honor, 
sent one of his men to fetch some; and the Duke, still 
very jocular and gay, went out ; and the council all said 
what a very agreeable duke he was ! In a little time, 
however, he came back quite altered — not at all jocular — - 
frowning and fierce — and suddenly said, — 

" What do those persons deserve who have compassed 
my destruction; I being the King's lawful, as well as 
natural, protector ? " 

To this strange question, Lord Hastings replied, that 
they deserved death, whosoever they were. 

" Then," said the Duke, " I tell you that they are that 
sorceress my brother's wife ; " meaning the Queen : " and 
that other sorceress, Jane Shore. Who, by witchcraft, 
have withered my body, and caused my arm to shrink 
as I now show you." 

He then pulled up his sleeve and showed them his 
arm, which was shrunken, it is true, but which had been 
so, as they all very well knew, from the hour of his 
birth. 

Jane Shore, being then the lover of Lord Hastings, as 
she had formerly been of the late King, that lord knew 
that he himself was attacked. So, he said, in some con- 
fusion : " Certainly, my Lord, if they have done this, they 
be worthy of punishment." 

"If?" said the Duke of Gloucester; "do you talk to 
me of ifs ? I tell you that they have so done, and I will 
make it good upon thv body, thou traitor ! " 

With that, he struck the table a great blow with his 
fist. This was a signal to some of his people outside, to 
cry "Treason!" They immediately did so, and there 
was a rush into the chamber of so many armed men that 
it was filled in a moment. 

" First," said the Duke of Gloucester to Lord Hastings, 
"I arrest thee, traitor! And let him," he added to the 
armed men who took him, "have a priest at once, for by 
St. Paul T will not dine until I have seen his head off ! " 

Lord Hastings was hurried to the green by the Tower 
chapel, and there beheaded on a log of wood that hap- 
pened to be lying on the ground. Then, the Duke dined 



228 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND, 

with a good appetite, and after dinner summoning the 
principal citizens to attend him, told them that Lord 
Hastings and the rest had designed to murder both him- 
self and the Duke of Buckingham, who stood by his side, 
if he had not providentially discovered their design, lie 
requested them to be so obliging as to inform their fellow- 
citizens of the truth of what he said, and issued a pro- 
clamation (prepared and neatly copied out beforehand) 
to the same effect. 

On the same day that the Duke did these things in the 
Tower, Sir Richard Ratcliffe the boldest and most un- 
daunted of his men, went down to Pontefract ; arrested 
Lord Rivers, Lord Gray, and two other gentlemen ; and 
publicly executed them on the scaffold, without any trial, 
for having intended the duke's death. Three days after- 
wards the Duke, not to lose time, went down the river 
to Westminster in his barge, attended by divers bishops, 
lords, and soldiers, and demanded that the Queen should 
deliver her second son, the Duke of York, into his safekeep- 
ing. The Queen, being obliged to comply, resigned the 
child after she had wept over him; and Richard of 
Gloucester placed him with his brother in the Tower. 
Then, he seized Jane Shore, and, because she had been the 
lover of the late King, confiscated her property, and got her 
sentenced to do public penance in the streets by walking 
in a scanty dress, with bare feet, and carrying a lighted. 
candle, to' St. Paul's Cathedral, through the most crowded 
part of the City. 

Having now all things ready for his own advancement, 
he caused a friar to preach a sermon at the cross which 
stood in front of St. Paul's Cathedral, in which he dwelt 
upon the profligate manners of the late King, and upon 
the late shame of Jane Shore, and hinted that the princes 
were not his children. " Whereas, good people," said 
the friar, whose name was Shaw, " my Lord the Pro- 
tector, the noble Duke of Gloucester, that sweet prince, 
the pattern of all the noblest virtues, is the perfect im- 
age and express likeness of his father." There had been 
a little plot between the Duke and the friar, that the Duke 
should appear in the crowd at this moment, when it was 
expected that the people would cry " Long live King 
Richard ! " But, either through the friar saying the 
words too soon, or through the Duke's coming too late, 



A CHILD'S HISTOBY OF ENGLAND. 229 

the Duke and the words did not come together, and the 
people only laughed, and the friar sneaked off ashamed. 

The Duke of Buckingham was a better hand at such 
business than the friar, so he went to the Guildhall the 
next day, and addressed the citizens in the Lord Pro- 
tector's behalf. A few dirty men who had been hired 
and stationed there for the purpose, crying when he had 
done, " God save King Richard ! " he made them a grave 
bow, and thanked them with all his heart. Next day, to 
make an end of it, he went with the mayor and some 
lords and citizens to Bayard Castle, by the river, where 
Richard then was, and read an address, humbly entreat- 
ing him to accept the Crown of England. Richard, who 
looked down upon them out of a window and pretended 
to be in great uneasiness and alarm, assured them there 
was nothing he desired less, and that his deep affection 
for his nephews forbade him to think of it. To this the 
Duke of Buckingham replied, with pretended warmth, 
that the free people of England would never submit to 
his nephew's rule, and that if Richard, who was the law- 
ful heir, refused the Crown, why then they must find 
some one else to wear it. The Duke of Gloucester re- 
turned, that since he used that strong language, it be- 
came his painful duty to think no more of himself, and to 
accept the Crown. 

Upon that, the people cheered and dispersed; and the 
Duke of Gloucester and the Duke of Buckingham passed 
a pleasant evening, talking over the play they had just 
acted with so much success, and every word of which 
they had prepared together. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

ENGLAND UNDER RICHARD THE THIRD. 

King Richard the Third was up betimes in the morn- 
ing, and went to Westminster Hall. In the Hall was a 
marble seat, upon which he sat himself down between 
two great noblemen, and told the people that he began 
the new reign in that place, because the first duty of a 
sovereign was to administer the laws equally to all, and 



230 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

to maintain justice. He then mounted, his horse and 
rode back to the City, where he was received by the clergy 
and the crowd as if he really had a right to the throne, 
and really were a just man. The clergy and the crowd 
must have been rather ashamed of themselves in secret, 
I think, for being such poor-spirited knaves. 

The new King and his Queen were soon crowned 
with a great deal of show and noise, which the people 
liked very much ; and then the King set forth on a royal 
progress through his dominions. He was crowned a 
second time at York, in order that the people might have 
show and noise enough ; and wherever he went was re- 
ceived with shouts of rejoicing — from a good many people 
of strong lungs, who were paid to "strain their throats in 
crying " God save King Richard ! " The plan was so 
successful that I am told it has been imitated since, by 
other usurpers, in other progresses through other domin- 
ions. 

While he was on this journey, King Richard stayed a 
week at Warwick. And from Warwick he sent instruc- 
tions home for one of the wickedest murders that ever 
was done — the murder of the two young princes, his neph- 
ews, who were shut up in the Tower of London. 

Sir Robert Brackenbury was at that time Governor of 
the Tower. To him, by the hands of a messenger named 
John Green, did King Richard send a letter, ordering 
him by some means to put the two young princes to 
death. But Sir Robert — I hope because he had 
children of his own, and loved them — sent John Green 
back again, riding and spurring along the dusty roads, 
with the answer that he could not do so horrible a piece 
of work. The King having frowningly considered a little, 
called to him Sir James Tyrrel, his master of the horse, 
and to him gave authority to take command of the Tower, 
whenever he would, for twenty-four hours, and to* keep 
all the keys of the Tower during that space of time. 
Tyrrel, well knowing what was wanted, looked about him 
for two hardened ruffians, and chose John Dighton, one 
of his own grooms, and Miles Forest, who was a mur- 
derer by trade. Having secured these two assistants, he 
went, upon a day in August, to the Tower, showed his 
authority from the King, took the command for four 
and twenty hours, and obtained possession of the keys. 



A CHilirS HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 231 

And when the black night came, he went creeping, creep- 
ing, like a guilty villain as he was, up the dark stone 
winding stairs, and along the dark stone passages, until 
he came to the door of the room where the two young 
princes, having said their prayers, lay fast asleep, clasped 
in each other's arms. And while he watched and listened 
at the door, he sent in those evil demons John Dighton 
and Miles Forest, who smothered the two princes with 
the bed and pillows, and carried their bodies down the 
stairs, and buried them under a great heap of stones at 
the staircase foot. And when the day came he gave up 
the command of the Tower, and restored the keys, and 
hurried away without once looking behind him ; and Sir 
Robert Brackenbury went with fear and sadness to the 
princes' room, and found the princes gone forever. 

You know, through all this history, how true it is that 
traitors are never true, and you will not be surprised to 
learn that the Duke of Buckingham soon turned against 
King Richard, and joined a great conspiracy that was 
formed to dethrone him, and to place the crown upon 
its rightful owner's head. Richard had meant to keep 
the murder secret; but when he heard through his spies 
that this conspiracy existed, and that many lords and 
gentlemen drank in secret to the healths of the two young 
princes in the Tower, he made it known that they were 
dead. The conspirators, though thwarted for a moment, 
soon resolved to set up for the crown against the murder- 
ous Richard, Henry Earl of Richmond, grandson of 
Catherine ; that widow of Henry the Fifth, who married 
Owen Tudor. And as Henry was of the House of Lan- 
caster, they proposed that he should marry the Princess 
Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of the late Kii ,g, now the 
heiress of the house of York, and thus by uniting the 
rival families put an end to the fatal wars of the Red 
and White Roses. All being settled, a time war appoint- 
ed for Henry to come over from Brittany, and for a great 
rising against Richard to take place in several parts of 
England at the same hour. On a certain day, therefore, 
in October, the revolt took place; but, unsuccessfully. 
Richard was prepared, Henry was driven back at sea by 
a storm, his followers in England were dispersed, and 
the Duke of Buckingham was taken and at once beheaded 
in the market-place at Salisbury. 



1>32 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

The time of his success was a good time, Richard 
thought, for summoning the Parliament and getting some 
money. So, a Parliament was called, and it flattered 
and fawned upon him as much as he could possibly desire, 
and declared him to be the rightful King of England, and 
his only son Edward, then eleven years of age, the next 
heir to the throne. 

Richard knew full well that, let the Parliament say 
what it would, the Princess Elizabeth was remembered 
by people as the heiress of the House of York; and hav- 
ing accurate information besides, of its being designed 
by the conspirators to marry her to Henry of Richmond,, 
he felt that it would much strengthen him and weaken 
them, to be beforehand with them, and marry her to his 
son. Witli this view he went to the Sanctuary at West- 
minster, where the late King's widow and her daughter 
still were, and besought them to come to Court: where 
(he swore by anything and everything) they should be 
safely and honorably entertained. They came, accord- 
ingly, but had scarcely been at Cour a month when his 
son died suddenly — or was poisoned — and his plan was 
was crushed to pieces. 

In this extremity King Richard, always active, thought, 
"I must make another plan." And he made the plan of 
marrying the Princess Elizabeth himself, although she 
was his niece. There was one difficulty in the way: his 
wife, the Queen Anne, was alive. But, he knew (remem- 
bering his nephews) how to remove that obstacle, and he 
made love to the Princess Elizabeth, telling her he felt 
perfectly confident that the Queen would die in February. 
The Princess was not a very scrupulous young lady, for, 
instead of rejecting the murderer of her brothers with 
scorn and hatred, she openly declared she loved him 
dearly ; and, when February came and the Queen did not 
die, she expressed her impatient opinion that she was 
too long about it. However, King Richard was not so 
far out in his prediction, but that she died in March — he 
took good care of that — and then this precious pair hoped 
to be married. But they were disappointed, for the idea 
of such a marriage was so unpopular in the country, that 
the King's chief counsellors, Ratcliffe and Catesby, 
would by no means undertake to propose it, and the King 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND, 238 

was even obliged to declare in public that he had never 
thought of such a thing. 

He was, by this time, dreaded and hated by all classes 
of his subjects. His nobles deserted every day to Henry's 
side ; he dared not call another Parliament, lest his crimes 
should be denounced there; and, for want of money, he 
was obliged to get Benevolences from the citizens, which 
exasperated them all against him. It was said too, that, 
being stricken by his conscience, he dreamed frightful 
dreams, and started up in the night-time, wild with 
terror and remorse. Active to the last, through all this, 
he issued vigorous proclamations against Henry of Rich- 
mond and all his followers, when he heard that they were 
coming against him with a Fleet from France ; and took 
the field as fierce and savage as a wild boar— the animal 
represented on his shield. 

Henry of Richmond landed with six thousand men at 
Milford Haven, and came on against King Richard, then 
encamped at Leicester with an army twice as great, 
through North Wales. On Bosworth Field, the two 
armies met; and Richard, looking along Henry's ranks, 
and seeing them crowded with the English nobles who 
had abandoned him, turned pale when he beheld the 
powerful Lord Stanley and his son (whom he had tried 
hard to retain) among them. But, he was as brave as he 
was wicked, and plunged into the thickest of the fight. 
He was riding hither and thither, laying about him in all 
directions, when he observed the Earl of Northumber- 
land—one of his few great allies— to stand inactive, and 
the main body of his troops to hesitate. At the same 
moment, his desperate glance caught Henry of Richmond 
among a little group of his knights. Riding hard at him, 
and crying "Treason!" he killed his standard-bearer, 
fiercely unhorsed another gentleman, and aimed a power- 
ful stroke at Henry himself, to cut him down. But, Sir 
William Stanley parried it as it fell, and before Richard 
could raise his arm again, he was borne down in a press 
of numbers, unhorsed and killed. Lord Stanley picked 
up the crown, all bruised and trampled, and stained with 
blood, and put it upon Richmond's head, amid loud and 
rejoicing cries of " Long live King Henry ! " 

That night, a horse was led up to the church of the 
Gray Friars at Leicester : across whose back was tied ? like 



234 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

some worthless sack, a naked body brought there for 
burial. It was the body of the last of the Plantagenet 
line, King Richard the Third, usurper and murderer, 
slain at the battle of Bos worth Field in the thirty-second 
year of his age, after a reign of two years. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

ENGLAND UNDEE HENEY THE SEVENTH. 

King Heney the Seventh did not turn out to be as 
fine a fellow as the nobility and people hoped, in the first 
joy of their deliverance from Richard the Third. He was 
very cold, crafty, and calculating, and would do almost 
anything for money. He possessed considerable ability, 
but his chief merit appears to have been that he was not 
cruel when there was nothing to be got by it. 

The new King had promised the nobles who had es- 
poused his cause that he would marry the Princess Eliza- 
beth. The first thing he did, was, to direct her to be 
removed from the castle of-Sheriff Hutton in Yorkshire, 
where Richard had placed her, and restored to the care of 
her mother in London. The young Earl of Warwick, 
Edward Plantagenet, son and heir of the late Duke of 
Clarence, had been kept a prisoner in this same old York- 
shire castle with her. This boy, who was now fifteen, 
the new King placed in the Tower for safety. Then he 
came to London in great state, and gratified the people 
with a fine procession ; on which kind of show he often 
very much relied for keeping them in good-humor. The 
sports and feasts which took place were followed by a 
terrible fever, called the sweating sickness ; of which 
great numbers of people died. Lord Mayors and Alder- 
men are thought to have suffered most from it ; whether 
because they were in the habit of over-eating themselves, 
or because they were very jealous of preserving filth and 
nuisances in the City (as they have been since), I don't 
know. 

The King's coronation was postponed on account of the 
•general ill-health, and he afterwards deferred his mar- 



A CHILD' S HISTOR Y OF ENGLAND. 235 

riage, as if he were not very anxious that it should take 
place : and, even after that, deferred the Queen's corona- 
tion so long that he gave offence to the York party. 
However, he set these things right in the end, by hang- 
ing some men and seizing on the rich possessions of 
others ; by granting more popular pardons to the follow- 
ers of the late King than could, at first, be got from him ; 
and by employing about his court some not very scrupu- 
lous persons who had been employed in the previous 
reign. 

As this reign was principally remarkable for two very 
curious impostures which have become famous in history, 
we will make these two stories its principal feature. 

There w T as a priest at Oxford of the name of Simons, 
who had for a pupil a handsome boy named Lambert 
Simnel, the son of a baker. Partly to gratify his own 
ambitious ends, and partly to carry out the designs of a 
secret party formed against the King, this priest de- 
clared that his pupil, the boy, was no other than the 
young Earl of Warwick ; who (as everybody might have 
known) was safely locked up in the Tower of London. 
The priest and the boy went over to Ireland ; and, at 
Dublin, enlisted in their cause all ranks of the people ; 
who seem to have been generous enough, but exceedingly 
irrational. The Earl of Kildarc, the governor of Ireland, 
declared that he believed the boy to be what the priest 
represented ; and the boy who had been well tutored by 
the priest, told them such things of his childhood, and 
gave them so many descriptions of the Royal Family, 
that they were perpetually shouting and hurrahing, and 
drinking his health, and making all kinds of noisy and 
thirsty demonstrations, to express their belief in him. 
Nor was this feeling confined to Ireland alone, for the 
Earl of Lincoln — whom the late usurper had named as 
his successor — went over to the young Pretender ; and, 
after holding a secret correspondence with the Dowager 
Duchess of Burgundy— the sister of Edward the Fourth, 
who detested the present King and all his race — sailed to 
Dublin with two thousand German soldiers of her provid- 
ing. In this promising state of the boy's fortunes, he 
was crowned there, with a crown taken off the head of a 
statue of the Virgin Mary ; and was then, according to 
the Irish custom of those days, carried home on the 



286 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

shoulders of a big chieftain possessing a great deal more 
strength than sense. Father Simons, you may be sure, 
was mighty busy at the coronation. 

Ten days afterwards, the Germans, and the Irish, and 
the priest, and the boy, and the Earl of Lincoln, all landed 
in Lancashire to invade England. The King, who had 
good intelligence of their movements, set up his standard 
at Nottingham, where vast numbers resorted to him every 
day ; while the Earl of Lincoln could gain but very few. 
With his small force he tried to make for the town of 
Newark ; but the King's army getting between him and 
that place, he had no choice but to risk a battle at Stoke. 
It soon ended in the complete destruction of the Pretend- 
er's forces, one-half of whom were killed ; among them, 
the Earl himself. The priest and the baker's boy were 
taken prisoners. The priest, after confessing the trick, 
was shut up in prison, where he afterwards died — sud- 
denly perhaps. The boy was taken into the King's kitchen 
and made a turnspit. He was afterwards raised to the 
station of one of the King's falconers; and so ended this 
strange imposition. 

There seems reason to suspect that the Dowager Queen 
— always a restless and busy woman — had had some share 
in tutoring the baker's son. The King was very angry 
with her, whether or no. He seized upon her property, 
and shut her up in a convent at Bermondsey.- 

One might suppose that the end of this story would have 
put the Irish people on their guard ; but they were quite 
ready to receive a second impostor, as they had received 
the first, and that same troublesome Duchess of Burgundy 
soon gave them the opportunity. All of a sudden there 
appeared at Cork, in a vessel arriving from Portugal, a 
young man of excellent abilities, of very handsome ap- 
pearance and most winning manners, who declared him- 
self to be Richard, Duke of York, the second son of King 
Edward the Fourth. " O," said some, even of those ready 
Irish believers, " but surely that young Prince was mur- 
dered by his uncle in the Tower ! " — "It is supposed so," 
said the engaging young man ; " and my brother was killed 
in that gloomy prison ; but I escaped — it don't matter 
how, at present — and have been wandering about the 
world for seven long years." This explanation being quite 
satisfactory to numbers of the Irish people, they began 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 287 

again to shout and to hurrah, and to drink his health, and 
to make the noisy and thirsty demonstrations all over 
again. And the big chieftain in Dublin began to look out 
for another coronation, and another young King to be car- 
ried home on his back. 

Now, King Henry being then on bad terms with France, 
the French King, Charles the Eighth, saw that, by pre- 
tending to believe in the handsome young man, he could 
trouble his enemy sorely. So, he invited him over to die 
French Court, and appointed him a body-guard, and 
treated him in all respects as if he really were the Duke 
of York. Peace, however, being soon concluded between 
the two Kings, the pretended Duke was turned adrift, 
and wandered for protection to the Duchess of Burgundy. 
She, after feigning to inquire into the reality of his claims, 
declared him to be the very picture of her dear departed 
brother; gave him a body-guard at her Court, of Unity 
halberdiers ; and called him by the sounding name of the 
White Rose of England. 

The leading members of the White Rose party in Eng- 
land sent over an agent, named Sir Robert Clifford, to 
ascertain whether the White Rose's claims were good: 
the King also sent over his agents to inquire into the 
Rose's history. The White Roses declared the young 
man to be really the Duke of York; the King declared 
him to be Perkin Warbeck, the son of a merchant of the 
city of Tournay, who had acquired his knowledge of Eng- 
land, its language and manners, from the English mer- 
chants who traded in Flanders; it was also stated by the 
Royal agents that he had been in the service of Lady 
Brompton, the wife of an exiled English nobleman, and 
that the Duchess of Burgundy had caused him to be 
trained and taught, expressly for this deception. The 
King then required the Archduke Philip — who was the 
sovereign of Burgundy — to banish this new Pretender, or 
to deliver him up ; but, as the Archduke replied that he 
could not control the Duchess in her own land, the King, 
in revenge, took the market of English cloth away from 
Antwerp, and prevented all commercial intercourse be- 
tween the two countries. 

He also, by arts and bribes, prevailed on Sir Robert 
Clifford to betray his employers ; and he denouncing 
several famous English noblemen as being secretly the 



238 A CHILD'S H1ST0BY OF ENGLAND. 

friends of Perkin Warbeck, the king had three of the 
foremost executed at once. Whether he pardoned the 
remainder because they were poor^ I do not know ; but 
it is only too probable that he refused to pardon one 
famous nobleman against whom the said Clifford soon 
afterwards informed separately, because he was rich. 
This was no other than Sir William Stanley, who had 
saved the King's life at the battle of Bos worth Field. It 
is very doubtful whether his treason amounted to much 
more than his having said, that if he were sure that the 
young man was the Duke of York, he would not take 
arms against him. Whatever he had done he admitted, 
like an honorable spirit ; and he lost his head for it, and 
the Govetous King gained all his wealth. 

Perkin Warbeck kept quiet for three years; but, as 
the Flemings began to complain heavily of the loss of 
their trade by the stoppage of the Antwerp market on 
his account, and as it was not unlikely that they might 
even go so far as to take his life, or give him up, he found 
it necessary to do something. Accordingly he made a 
desperate sally, and landed, with only a few hundred 
men, on the coast of Deal. But he was soon glad to get 
back to the place from whence he came ; for the country 
people rose against his followers, killed a great many, 
and took a hundred and fifty prisoners : who were all 
driven to London, tied together with ropes, like a team 
of cattle. Every one of them was hanged on some part 
or other of the seashore ; in order, that if any more men 
should come over with Perkin Warbeck, they might 
see the bodies as a warning before they landed. 

Then the wary King, by making a treaty of commerce 
with the Flemings, drove Perkin Warbeck out of that 
country; and, by completely gaining over the Irish 
to his side, deprived him of that asylum too. lie 
wandered away to Scotland, and told his story at that 
Court. King James the Fourth of Scotland, who was 
no friend to King Henry, and had no reason to be (for 
King Henry had bribed his Scotch lords to betray him 
more than once ; but had never succeeded in his plots), 
gave him a great reception, called him his cousin, and 
gave him in marriage the Lady Catherine Gordon, a 
beautiful and charming creature related to the royal 
house of Stuart, 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 239 

Alarmed by this successful reappearance of the Pre- 
tender, the King still undermined, and bought, and 
bribed, and kept his doings and Perkin Warbeck's story 
in the dark, when he might, one would imagine, have 
rendered the matter clear to all England. But, for all 
this bribing of the Scotch lords at the Scotch King's 
Court, he could not procure the Pretender to be delivered 
up to him. James, though not very particular in many 
respects, would not betray him ; and the ever-busy 
Duchess of Burgundy so provided him with arms, and 
good soldiers, and with money besides, that he had soon 
a little army of fifteen hundred men of various nations. 
With these, and aided by the Scottish King in person, he 
crossed the border into England, and made a proclama- 
tion to the people, in which he called the King " Henry 
Tudor ; " offered large rewards to any who should take 
or distress him ; and announced himself as King Richard 
the Fourth come to receive the homage of his faithful 
subjects. His faithful subjects, however, cared nothing 
for him, and hated his faithful troops : who, being of dif- 
ferent nations, quarrelled also among themselves. Worse 
than this, if worse were possible, they began to plunder 
the country ; upon which the White Rose said, that he 
would rather lose his rights, than gain them through the 
miseries of the English people. The Scottish King made 
a jest of his scruples ; but they and their whole force 
went back again without fighting a battle. 

JThe worst consequence of this attempt was, that a 
rising took place among the people of Cornwall, who con- 
sidered themselves too heavily taxed to meet the charges 
of the expected war. Stimulated by Flam mock, a law- 
yer, and Joseph, a blacksmith, and joined by Lord Audley 
and some other country gentlemen, they marched on all 
the way to Deptford Bridge, where they fought a battle 
with the King's army. They were defeated — though the 
Cornish men fought with great bravery — and the lord 
was beheaded, and the lawyer and the blacksmith were 
hanged, drawn, and quartered. The rest w r ere pardoned. 
The King, who believed every man to be as avaricious as 
himself, and thought that money could settle anything, 
allowed them to make bargains for their liberty with the 
soldiers who had taken them. 

Perkiir War beck, doomed to wander up and down ? and 



240 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

never to find rest anywhere — a sad fate : almost a sufficient 
punishment for an imposture, which he seems in time 
to have half believed himself — lost his Scottish "refuge 
through a truce being made between the two Kings; and 
found himself, once more, without a country before him 
in which he could lay his head. But James (always hon- 
orable and true to him, alike when he melted clown his 
plate, and even the great gold chain he had been used to 
wear, to pay soldiers in his cause; and now, when that 
cause was lost and hopeless did not conclude the treaty, 
until he had safely departed out of the Scottish domin- 
ions. He and his beautiful wife, who was faithful to him 
under all reverses, and left her state and home to follow 
his poor fortunes, were put aboard ship with everything 
necessary for their comfort and protection, and sailed for 
Ireland. 

But, the Irish people had had enough of counterfeit 
Earls of Warwick and Dukes of York, for one while; 
and would give the White Rose no aid. So, the W r hite 
Rose — encircled by thorns indeed — resolved to go with 
his beautiful wife to Cornwall as a forlorn resource, and 
see what might be made of the Cornish men, who had 
risen so valiantly a little while before, and who had 
fought so bravely at Deptford Bridge. 

To Whitsand Bay, in Cornwall, accordingly, came 
Perkin Warbeck and his wife; and the lovely lady he 
shut up for safety in the Castle of Saint Michael's Mount, 
and then marched into Devonshire at the head of three 
thousand Cornish men. These were increased to six thou- 
sand by the time of his arrival in Exeter; but, there the 
people made a stout resistance, and he went to Taunton, 
where he came in sight of the king's army. The stout 
Cornish men, although they were few in number, and 
badly armed, were so bold, that they never thought of 
retreating; but bravely looked forward to a battle on the 
morrow. Unhappily for them, the man who was pos- 
sessed of so many engaging qualities, and who attracted 
so many people to his side when he had nothing else 
with which to tempt them, was not as brave as they. 
In the night when the two armies lay opposite to each 
other, he mounted a swift horse and fled. When morn- 
ing dawned, the poor confiding Cornish men, discovering 
that they had no leader, surrendered to the King's power. 






A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 241 

Some of them were hanged, and the rest were pardoned 
and went miserably home. 

Before the King pursued Perkin Warbeck to the sanct- 
uary of Beaulieu in the New Forest, where it was soon 
known that he had taken refuge, he sent a body of horse- 
men to St. Michael's Mount, to seize his wife. She was 
soon taken, and brought as a captive before the King. 
But she was so beautiful, and so good, and so devoted to 
the man in whom she believed, that the King regarded 
her with compassion, treated her with great respect, and 
placed her at Court, near the Queen's person. And many 
years after Perkin Warbeck was no more, and when his 
strange story had become like a nursery tale, she was 
called the White Rose by the people, in remembrance 
of her beauty. 

The sanctuary at Beaulieu was soon surrounded by 
the King's men ; and the King, pursuing his usual dark 
artful ways, sent pretended friends to Perkin Warbeck 
to persuade him to come out and surrender himself. 
This he soon did; the King having taken a good look at 
the man of whom he had heard so much — from behind 
a screen — directed him to be well mounted, and to ride 
behind him at a little distance, guarded, but not bound 
in any way. So they entered London with the King's 
favorite show — a procession; and some of the people 
hooted as the Pretender rode slowly through the streets 
to the Tower; but the greater part were quiet, and very 
curious to'see him. P>om the Tower, he was taken to 
the Palace at Westminster, and there lodged like a gen- 
tleman, though closely watched. He was examined every 
now and then as to his imposture; but the King was so 
secret in all he did, that even then he gave it a conse- 
quence which it cannot be supposed to have in itself 
deserved. 

At last Perkin Warbeck ran away, and took refuge in 
another sanctuary near Richmond in Surrey. From this 
he was again persuaded to deliver himself up; and, being 
conveyed to London, he stood in the stocks for a whole 
day, outside Westminster Hall, and there read a paper 
purporting to be his full confession, and relating his his- 
tory as the King's agents had originally described it. 
He was then shut up in the Tower again, in the company 
of the Earl of Warwick, who had now been there for f our« 



£42 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF EN&LANl). 

teen years : ever since his removal out of Yorkshire, 
except when the King had had him at Court, and had 
shown him to the people, to prove the imposture of the 
Baker's boy. It is but too probable, when we consider 
the crafty character of Henry the Seventh, that these two 
were brought together for a cruel purpose. A plot was 
soon discovered between them and the keepers, to mur- 
der the Governor, get possession of the keys, and proclaim 
Perkin Warbeck as King Richard the Fourth. That there 
was some such plot, is likely ; that they were tempted 
into it, is at least as likely ; that the unfortunate Earl of 
Warwick — last male of the Plantagenet line — was too un- 
used to the world, and too ignorant and simple to know 
much about it, whatever it was, is perfectly certain ; and 
that it was the King's interest to get rid of him, is no less 
so. He was beheaded on Tower Hill, and Perkin Warbeck 
was hanged at Tyburn. 

Such was the end of the pretended Duke of York, whose 
shadowy history was made more shadowy — and ever will 
be — by the mystery and craft of the King. If he had 
turned his great natural advantages to a more honest ac- 
count, he might have lived a happy and respected life, 
even in those days. Bat he died upon a gallows at 
Tyburn, leaving the Scottish lady, who had loved him so 
well, kindly protected at the Queen's Court. After some 
time she forgot her old loves and troubles, as many people 
do with Time's merciful assistance, and married a Welsh 
gentleman. Her second husband, Sir Matthew Cradoc, 
more honest and more happy than her first, lies beside 
her in a tomb in the old church of Swansea. 

The ill-blood between France and England in this reign, 
arose out of the continued plotting of the Duchess of 
Burgundy, and disputes respecting the affairs of Brittany. 
The King feigned to be very patriotic, indignant, and 
warlike ; but he always contrived so as never to make 
war in reality, and always to make money. His taxation 
of the people, on pretence of war with France, involved 
at one time, a very dangerous insurrection, headed by 
Sir John Egremont, and a common man called John a 
Chambre. But it was subdued by the royal forces, under 
the command of the Earl of Surrey. The knighted John 
escaped to the Duchess of Burgundy, who was ever ready 
to receive any one who gave the King trouble ; and the 






A C&IL&S HISTOBY OF ENGLAND. 24& 

plain John was hanged at York, in the midst of a number 
of his men, but on a much higher gibbet, as being a greater 
traitor. Hung high or hung low, however, hanging is 
much the same to the person hung. 

Within a year after her marriage, the Queen had given 
birth to a son, who was called Prince Arthur, in remem- 
brance of the old British prince of romance and story ; 
and who, when all these events had happened, being then 
in his fifteenth year, was married to Catherine, the 
daughter of the Spanish monarch, with great rejoicings 
and brighter prospects; but in a very few months he 
sickened and died. As soon as the King had recovered 
from his grief, he thought it a pity that the fortune of 
the Spanish Princess, amounting to two hundred thousand 
crowns, should go out of the family ; and therefore ar- 
ranged that the young widow should marry his second 
son Henry, then twelve years of age, when he too should 
be fifteen. There were objections to this marriage on the 
part of the clergy ; but, as the infallible Pope was gained 
over, and, as he must be right, that settled the business 
for the time. The King's eldest daughter was provided 
for, and a long course of disturbance was considered to 
be set at rest, by her being married to the Scottish King. 

And now the Queen died. When the King had got 
over that grief too, his mind once more reverted to his 
darling money for consolation, and he thought of marry- 
ing the Dowager Queen of Naples, who was immensely 
rich ; but, as it turned out not to be practicable to gain the 
money, however practicable it might have been to gain 
the lady, he gave up the idea. He was not so fond of her 
but that he soon proposed to marry the Dowager Duchess 
of Savoy ; and, soon afterwards, the widow of the King 
of Castile, who was raving mad. But he made a money - 
bargain instead, and married neither. 

The Duchess of Burgundy, among the other discon- 
tented people to whom she had^given refuge, had sheltered 
Edmund de la Pole (younger brother of that Earl of 
Lincoln who was killed at Stoke), now Earl of Suffolk. 
The King had prevailed upon him to return to the mar- 
riage of Prince Arthur ; but he soon afterwards went away 
again ; and then the King, suspecting a conspiracy, re- 
sorted to his favorite plan of sending him some treacher- 
ous friends, and buying of those scoundrels the secrets 



244 " A CHILD'S BISTORT OF ENGLAND 

they disclosed or invented. Some arrests and executions 
took place in consequence. In the end, the King, on a 
promise of not taking his life, obtained possession of the 
person of Edmund de la Pole, and shut him up in the 
Tower. 

This was his last enemy. If he had lived much longer 
he would have made many more among the people, by 
the grinding exaction to which he constantly exposed 
them, and by the tyrannical acts of his two prime favorites 
in all money-raising matters, Edmund Dudley and Rich- 
ard Empson. But Death — the enemy who is not to be 
bought off or deceived, and on whom no money, and no 
treachery, has any effect— presented himself at this junct- 
ure, and ended the King's reign. He died of the gout, 
on the twenty-second of April, one thousand five hundred 
and nine, and in the fifty-third year of his age, after reign- 
ing twenty-four years ; he was buried in the beautiful 
Chapel of Westminster Abbey, which he had himself 
founded, and which still bears his name. 

It was in this reign that the great Christopher Colum- 
bus, on behalf of Spain, discovered what was then called 
The New World. Great wonder, interest, and hope of 
wealth being awakened in England thereby, the King 
and the merchants of London and Bristol fitted out an 
English expedition for further discoveries in the New 
World, and intrusted it to Sebastian Cabot, of Bristol, 
the son of a Venetian pilot there. He was very success- 
ful in his voyage, and gained high reputation, both for 
himself and England. 



CHAPTER XXVIL 

ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE EIGHTH, CALLED BLUFF KING 
HAL AND BURLY KING HARRY. 

Wn now come to King Henry the Eighth, whom it has 
been too much the fashion to call "Bluff King Hal," and 
1* Burly King Harry," and other fine names ; but whom I 
shall take the liberty to call, plainly, one of the most de- 
testable villains that ever drew breath. You will be able 
to judge, long before we come to the end of his life, 
whether he deserves the character. 



A CHILD'S BISTORT OF MftQLAND. 245 

He was just eighteen years of age when he came to the 
throne. People said he was handsome then ; but I don't 
believe it. He was a big, burly, noisy, small-eyed, large- 
faced, double-chinned, swinish looking fellow in later 
life (as we know from the likenesses of him, painted by 
the famous Hans Holbein), and it is not easy to believe 
that so bad a character can ever have been veiled under 
a prepossessing appearance. 

He was anxious to make himself popular ; and the peo- 
ple, who had long disliked the late King, were very will- 
ing to believe that he deserved to be so. He was ex- 
tremely fond of show and display, and so were they. 
Therefore there was great rejoicing when he married the 
Princess Catherine, and when they were both crowned. 
And the King fought at tournaments and always came 
off victorious — for the courtiers took care of that — and 
there was a general outcry that he was a wonderful 
man. Einpson, Dudley, and their supporters were ac- 
cused of a variety of crimes they had never committed, 
instead of the offences of which they really had been 
guilty; and they were pilloried, and set upon horses with 
their faces to the tails, and knocked about and beheaded, 
to the satisfaction of the people, and the enrichment of 
the King. 

The Pope, so indefatigable in getting the world into 
trouble, had mixed himself up in a war on the continent 
of Europe, occasioned by the reigning Princes of little 
quarrelling states in Italy having at various times mar- 
ried into other Royal families, and so led to their claim- 
ing a share in those petty Governments. The King, who 
discovered that he was very fond of the Pope, sent a 
herald to the King of France, to say that he must not 
make war upon that holy personage, because he was the 
father of all Christians. As the French King did not 
mind this relationship in the least, and also refused to 
admit a claim King Henry made to certain lands in 
France, war was declared between the two countries. 
Not to perplex this story with an account of the tricks 
and designs of all the sovereigns who were engaged in 
it, it is enough to say that England made a blundering 
alliance with Spain, and got stupidly taken in by that 
country; which made its own terms with France when 
it could, and left England in the lurch. Sir Edward 



246 A CHILD'S B2ST0HT OF mGLANl*. 

Howard, a bold admiral, son of the Earl of Surrey, dis- 
tinguished himself by his bravery against the French in 
this business; but, unfortunately, he was more brave 
than wise, for, skimming into the French harbor of Brest 
with only a few row-boats, he attempted (in revenge for 
the defeat and death of Sir Thomas Knyvett, another 
bold English admiral) to take some strong French ships, 
well defended with batteries of cannon. The upshot was, 
that he was left on board of one of them (in consequence 
of its shooting away from his own boat), with not more 
than about a dozen men, and was thrown into the sea 
and drowned : though not until he had taken from his 
breast his gold chain and gold whistle, which were the 
signs of his office, and had cast them into the sea to pre- 
vent their being made a boast of by the enemy. After 
this defeat— which was a great one, for Sir Edward 
Howard was a man of valor and fame — the King took it 
into his head to invade France in person ; first executing 
that dangerous Earl of Suffolk whom his father had left 
in the Tower, and appointing Queen Catherine to the 
charge of his kingdom in his absence. He sailed to 
Calais, where he was joined by Maximilian, Emperor of 
Germany, who pretended to be his soldier, and who took 
pay in his service : with a good deal of nonsense of that 
sort, flattering enough to the vanity of a vain blusterer. 
The King might be successful enough in sham fights; 
but his idea of real battles chiefly consisted in pitching 
silken tents of bright colors that were ignominiously 
blown down by the wind, and in making a vast display 
of gaudy flags and golden curtains. Fortune, however, 
favored him better than he deserved ; for, after much 
waste of time in tent pitching, flag flying, gold curtain- 
ing, and other such masquerading, he gave the French 
battle at a place called Guinegate : where they took such 
an unaccountable panic, and fled with such swiftness, 
that it was ever afterwards called by the English the 
Battle of Spurs. Instead of following up his advantage, 
the King, finding that he had had enough of real fighting, 
came home again. 

The Scottish King, though nearly related to Henry by 
marriage, had taken part against him in this war. The 
Earl of Surrey, as the English general, advanced to meet 
him when he came out of his own dominions and crossed 



A CHILD'S MlSTOBT OF ENGLAND. 247 

the river Tweed. The two armies came up with one 
another when the Scottish King had also crossed the 
river Till, and was encamped upon the last of the Cheviot 
Hills, called the Hill of Flodden. Along the plain below 
it, the English, when the hour of battle came, advanced. 
The Scottish army, which had been drawn up in five 
great bodies, then came steadily down in perfect silence. 
So they, in their turn, advanced to meet the English 
army, which came on in one long line ; and they attacked 
it with a body of spearmen, under Lord Home. At first 
they had the best of it ; but the English recovered them- 
selves so bravely, and fought with such valor, that, when 
the Scottish King had almost made his way up to the 
Royal Standard, he was slain, and the whole Scottish 
power routed. Ten thousand Scottish men lay dead that 
day on Flodden Field; and among them, numbers of the 
nobility and gentry. For a long time afterwards, the 
Scottish peasantry used to believe that their King had 
not been really killed in this battle, because no English- 
man had found an iron belt he wore about his body as a 
penance for having been an unnatural and undutiful son. 
But, whatever became of his belt, the English had his 
sword and dagger, and the ring from his finger, and his 
body too, covered with wounds. There is no doubt of 
it ; for it was seen and recognized by English gentlemen 
who had known the Scottish King well. 

When King Henry was making ready to renew the 
war in France, the French King was contemplating peace. 
His queen, dying at this time, he proposed, though he 
was upwards of fifty years old, to marry King Henry's 
sister, the Princess Mary, who, besides being only sixteen, 
was betrothed to the Duke of Suffolk. As the inclina- 
tions of young Princesses were not much considered in 
such matters, the marriage was concluded, and the poor 
girl was escorted to France, where she was immediately 
left as the French King's bride, with only one of all her 
English attendants. That one was a pretty young girl 
named Anne Boleyn, niece of the Earl of Surrey, who 
had been made Duke of Norfolk, after the victory of 
Flodden Field. Anne Boleyn's is a name to be remem- 
bered, as you will presently find. 

And now the French King, who was very proud of his 
young wife, was preparing for many years of happiness, 



M% A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND 

and she was looking forward, I dare say, to many years 
of misery, when he died within three months, and left 
her a young widow. The new French monarch, Francis 
the First, seeing how important it was to his interests 
that she should take for her second husband no one but 
an Englishman, advised her first lover, the Duke of Suf- 
folk, when King Henry sent him over to France to fetch 
her home, to marry her. The Princess being herself so 
fond of that Duke, as to tell him that he must either do 
so then, Or forever lose her, they were wedded; and 
Henry afterwards forgave them. In making interest 
with the King, the Duke of Suffolk had addressed his 
most powerful favorite and adviser, Thomas Wolsey — a 
name very famous in history for its rise and downfall. 

Wolsey was the son of a respectable butcher at Ips- 
wich, in Suffolk, and received so excellent an education 
that he became a tutor to the family of the Marquis of 
Dorset, who afterwards got him appointed one of the 
late King's chaplains. On the accession of Henry the 
Eighth, he was promoted and taken into great favor. 
He was now Archbishop of York ; the Pope had made 
him a Cardinal besides ; and whoever wanted influence 
in England or favor with the King — whether he were a 
foreign monarch or an English nobleman — was obliged to 
make a friend of the great Cardinal Wolsey. 

He was a gay man, who could dance and jest, and sing 
and drink ; and those were the roads to so much, or 
rather so little, of a heart as King Henry had. He was 
wonderfully fond of pomp and glitter, and so was the 
King. He knew a good deal of the Church learning of 
that time; much of which consisted in finding artful 
excuses and pretences for almost any wrong thing, and 
in arguing that black was white, or any other color. This 
kind of learning pleased the King too. For many such 
reasons, the Cardinal was high in estimation with the 
King ; and, being a man of far greater ability, knew as 
well how to manage him, as a clever keeper may know 
how to manage a wolf or a tiger or any other cruel and 
uncertain beast, that may turn upon him and tear him 
any day. Never had there been seen in England such 
state as my Lord Cardinal kept. His wealth was enor- 
mous; equal, it was reckoned, to the riches of the Crown. 
His palaces were as splendid as the King's, and his 



A CHILD'S HISTOBY OF ENGLAND. 249 

retinue was eight hundred strong. He held his Court, 
dressed out from top to toe in flaming scarlet; and his 
very shoes were golden, set with precious stones. His 
followers rode on blood horses ; while he, with a wonder- 
ful affectation of humility in the midsfc of his grent splen- 
dor, ambled on a mule with a red velvet saddle and 
bridle and golden stirrups. 

Through the influence of this stately priest, a grand 
meeting was arranged to take place between the French 
and English Kings in France ; but on ground belonging 
to England. A prodigious show of friendship and rejoic- 
ing was to be made on the occasion ; and heralds were 
sent to proclaim with brazen trumpets through all the 
principal cities of Europe, that, on a certain day, the 
Kings of France and England, as companions and 
brothers in arms, each attended by eighteen followers, 
would hold a tournament against all knights who might 
choose to come. 

Charles, the new Emperor of Germany (the old one 
being dead), wanted to prevent too cordial an alliance 
between these sovereigns, and came over to England 
before the King could repair to the place of meeting; and, 
besides making an agreeable impression upon him, secured 
"Wolsey's interest by promising that his influence should 
make him Pope when the next vacancy occurred. On 
the day when the Emperor left England, the King and 
all the Court went over to Calais, and thence to the place 
of meeting, between Ardres and Guisnes, commonly culled 
the Field of the Cloth of Gold. Here, all manner of ex- 
pense and prodigality was lavished on the decorations of 
the show; many of the knights and gentlemen being so 
superbly dressed that it was said they carried their 
whole estates upon their shoulders. 

There were sham castles, temporary chapels, fountains 
running wine, great cellars full of wine free as water to 
all comers, silk tents, gold lace and foil, gilt lions, and 
such things without end ; and, in the midst of all, the 
rich Cardinal out-shone and out-glittered all the noble- 
men and gentlemen assembled. After a treaty made be- 
tween the two Kings with as much solemnity as if they 
had intended to keep it, the lists — nine hundred feet long, 
and three hundred and twenty broad — were opened for 
the tournament ; the Queens of France and England look- 



250 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

ing on with great array of lords and ladies. Then, for 
ten days, the two sovereigns fought five combats every 
day, and always beat their polite adversaries; though 
they do write that the King of England, being thrown in 
a wrestle one day by the King of France, lost his kingly 
temper with his brother in arms, and wanted to make a 
quarrel of it. Then, there was a great story belonging 
to this Field of the Cloth of Gold, showing how the 
English were distrustful of the French, and the French 
of the English, until Francis rode alone one morning to 
Henry's tent ; and, going in before he was out of bed, told 
him in joke that he was his prisoner ; and how Henry 
jumped out of bed and embraced Francis ; and how 
Francis helped Henry to dress, and warmed his linen for 
him ; and how Henry gave Francis a splendid jewelled 
collar, and how Francis gave Henry, in return, a costly 
bracelet. All this and a great deal more was so written 
about, and sung about, and talked about at that time 
(and, indeed, since that time" too), that the world has had 
good cause to be sick of it, forever. 

Of course, nothing came of all these fine doings but a 
speedy renewal of the war between England and France, 
in which the two Royal companions and brothers in arms 
longed very earnestly to damage one another. But, be- 
fore it broke out again, the Duke of Buckingham was 
shamefully executed on Tower Hill, on the evidence of a 
discharged servant — really for nothing, except the folly 
of having believed in a friar of the name of Hopkins, who 
had pretended to be a prophet, and who had mumbled 
and jumbled out some nonsense about the Duke's son 
being destined to be very great in the land. It was be- 
lieved that the unfortunate Duke had given offence to the 
great Cardinal by expressing his mind freely about the 
expense and absurdity of the whole business of the Field 
of the Cloth of Gold. At any rate, he was beheaded, as I 
have said, for nothing. Anal the people who saw it done 
were very angry, and cried out that it was the work of 
"the butcher's son ! " 

The new war was a short one, though the Earl of 
Surrey invaded France again, and did some injury to that 
country. It ended in another treaty of peacs between the 
two kingdoms, and in the discovery that the Emperor of 
Germany was not such a good friend to England in reality, 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 251 

as he pretended to be. Neither did he keep his promise 
to Wolsey to make him Pope, though the King urged 
him. Two Popes died in pretty quick succession : but the 
foreign priests were too much for the Cardinal, and kept 
him out of the post. So the Cardinal and King together 
found out that the Emperor of Germany was not a man 
to keep faith with ; broke off a projected marriage be- 
tween the King's daughter Mary, Princess of Wales, and 
that sovereign ; and began to consider whether it might 
not be well to marry the young lady, either to Francis 
himself, or to his eldest son. 

There now arose at Wittemberg, in Germany, the great 
leader of the mighty change in England which is called 
the Reformation, and which set the people free from their 
slavery to the priests. This was a learned Doctor, 
named Martin Luther, who knew all about them, for he 
had been a priest, and even a monk, himself. The preach- 
ing and writing of Wickliffe had set a number of men 
thinking on this subject ; and Luther finding one day to 
his great surprise, that there really was a book called the 
New Testament which the priests did not allow to be 
read, and which contained truths that they suppressed, 
began to be very vigorous against the whole body, from 
the Pope downward. It happened, while he was yet. 
only beginning his vast work of awakening the nation, 
that an impudent fellow named Tetzel, a friar of very 
bad character, came into his neighborhood selling what 
were called Indulgences, by wholesale, to raise money 
for beautifying the great Cathedral of St. Peter's, at Rome. 
Whoever bought an Indulgence of the Pope was supposed 
to buy himself off from the punishment of Heaven for 
his offences. Luther told the people that these Indul- 
gences were worthless bits of paper, before God, and that 
Tetzel and his masters were a crew of impostors in sell- 
ing them. 

The King and the Cardinal were mightily indignant at 
this presumption ; and the King (with the help of Sir 
Thomas More, a wise man, whom he afterwards repaid 
by striking off his head) even wrote a book about it, with 
which the Pope was so weir pleased that he gave the 
King the title of Defender of the Faith. The King and 
the Cardinal also issued flaming warnings to the people 
not to read Luther's books, on pain of excommunication. 



252 A CHILD'S HISTOBY OF ENGLAND 

But they did read them for all that ; and the rumor oi 
what was in them spread far and wide. 

When this great change was thus going on, the King 
began to show himself in his truest and worst colors. 
Anne Boleyn, the pretty little girl who had gone abroad 
to France with his sister, was by this time grown up to 
be very beautiful, and was one of the ladies in attendance 
on Queen Catherine. Now, Queen Catherine was no 
longer young or handsome, and it is likely that she was 
not particularly good-tempered ; having been always 
rather melancholy, and having been made more so by the 
deaths of four of her children when they were very young. 
So, the King fell in love with the fair Anne Boleyn, 
and said to himself, " How can I be best rid of my 
own troublesome wife whom I am tired of, and marry 
Anne?" 

You recollect that Queen Catherine had been the wife 
of Henry's young brother. What does theKingdo, after 
thinking it over, but calls his favorite priests about him, 
and says, O ! his mind is in such a dreadful state, and he 
is so frightfully uneasy, because he is afraid it was not 
lawful for him to marry the Queen ! Not one of those 
priests had the courage to hint that it was rather curious 
he had never thought of that before, and that his mind 
seemed to have been in a tolerably jolly condition during 
a great many years, in which he certainly had not fretted 
himself thin ; but, they all said, Ah ! that was very true, 
and it was a serious business ; and perhaps the best way 
to make it right, would be for his Majesty to be divorced ! 
The King replied, Yes, he thought that would be the 
best way, certainly ; so they all went to work. 

If I were to relate to you the intrigues and plots that 
took place in the endeavor to get this divorce, you would 
think the History of England the most tiresome book in 
the world. So I shall say no more, than that after avast 
deal of negotiation and evasion, the Pope issued a com- 
mission to Cardinal Wolsey and Cardinal Campeggio 
(whom he sent over from Italy for the purpose), to try 
the whole case in England. It is supposed — and I think 
with reason — that Wolsey was the Queen's enemy, be? 
cause she had reproved him for his proud and gorgeous 
manner of life. But, he did not at first know that the 
King wanted to marry Anne Boleyn ; and when he did 



A CHILD'S HISTOBY OF ENGLAND. 253 

know it, he even went down on his knees, in the en- 
deavor to dissuade him. 

The Cardinals opened their Court in the Convent of 
the Black Friars, near to where the bridge of that name 
in London now stands ; and the King- and Queen, that 
they might be near it, took up their lodgings at the ad- 
joining palace of Bridewell, of which nothing now re- 
mains but a bad prison. On the opening of the court, 
when the King and Queen were called on to appear, that 
poor ill-used lady, with a dignity and firmness and yet 
with a womanly affection worthy to be always admired, 
went and kneeled at the King's feet, and said that she 
had come, a stranger, to his dominions ; that she had 
been a good and true wife to him for twenty years; and 
that she could acknowledge no power in those Cardinals 
to try whether she should be considered Ids wife after all 
that time, or should be put away. With that, she got up 
and left the court, and would never afterwards come back 
to it. 

The King pretended to be very much overcome, and 
said, O ! my lords and gentlemen, what a good woman 
she was to be sure, and how delighted he would be to 
live with her unto death, but for that terrible uneasiness 
in his mind which was quite wearing him away ! So, 
the case went on, and there was nothing but talk for two 
months. Then Cardinal Campeggio, who on behalf of the 
Pope, wanted nothing so much as delay, adjourned it for 
two more months; and before that time was elapsed, the 
Pope himself adjourned it definitely, by requiring the 
King and Queen to come to Rome and have it tried there. 
But by good luck for the King, word was brought to him 
by some of his people, that they happened to meet at. 
supper, Thomas Cranmer a learned Doctor of Cambridge, 
who had proposed to urge the Pope on, by referring the 
case to all the learned doctors and bishops, here and there 
and everywhere, and getting their opinions that the 
King's marriage was unlawful. The King, who was now 
in a hurry to marry Anne Boleyn, thought this such 
a good idea, that he sent for Cranmer, posthaste, and said 
to Lord Rochfort, Anne Boleyn's father, "Take this 
learned Doctor down to your country-house, and there 
let him have a good room for a study, and no end of 
books out of which to prove that I may marry your 



254 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

daughter." Lord Rochfort, not at all reluctant, made 
the learned Doctor as comfortable as he could; and the 
learned Doctor went to work to prove his case. All this 
time, the King and Anne Boleyn were writing letters to 
one another almost daily, full of impatience to have the 
case settled ; and Anne Boleyn was showing herself (as I 
think) very worthy of the fate which afterwards befell 
her. 

It was bad for Cardinal Wolsey that he had left Cran- 
mer to render this help. It was worse for him that he 
had tried to dissuade the King from marrying Anne 
Boleyn. Such a servant as he, to such a master as Henry, 
would probably have fallen in any case; but, between 
the hatred of the party of the Queen that was, and the 
hatred of the party of the Queen that was to be, he fell 
suddenly and heavily. Going down one day to the Court 
of Chancery, where he now presided, he was waited upon 
by the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, who told him that 
they brought an order to him to resign that office, and 
to withdraw quietly to a house he had at Esher, in Sur- 
rey. The Cardinal refusing, they rode off to the King; 
and next day came back with a letter from him, on read- 
ing which, the Cardinal submitted. An inventory was 
made out of all the riches in his palace at York Place 
(now Whitehall), and he went sorrowfully up the river, 
in his barge, to Putney. An abject man he was, in spite 
of his pride; for being overtaken, riding out of that place 
towards Esher, by one of the King's chamberlains who 
brought him a kind message and a ring, he alighted from 
his mule, took off his cap, and kneeled down in the dirt. 
His poor Fool, whom in his prosperous days he had al- 
ways kept in his palace to entertain him, cut a far better 
figure than he; for, when the Cardinal said to the cham- 
berlain that he had nothing to send to his lord the King 
as a present, but that jester, who was a most excellent 
one, it took six strong yeomen to remove the faithful 
fool from his master. 

The once proud Cardinal was soon further disgraced, 
and wrote the most abject letters to his vile sovereign ; 
who humbled him one day and encouraged him the next, 
according to his humor, until he was at last ordered to 
go and reside in his diocese of York. He said he was 
too poor ; but J don't know how he made that out, for 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 255 

he took a hundred and sixty servants with him, and 
seventy-two cart-loads of furniture, food, and wine. He 
remained in that part of the country for the best part of 
a year, and showed himself so improved by his misfort- 
unes, and was so mild and so conciliating, that he won 
all hearts. And indeed, even in his proud days, he had 
done some magnificent things for learning and educa- 
tion. At last, he was arrested for high treason; and, 
coming slowly on his journey towards London, got as far 
as Leicester. Arriving at Leicester Abbey after dark, 
and very ill, he said — when the monks came out at the 
gate with lighted torches to receive him — that he had 
come to lay his bones among them. He had indeed ; for 
he was taken to a bed, from which he never rose again. 
His last words were, " Had I but served God as diligently 
as I have served the King, he would not have given me 
over, in my gray hairs. Howbeit, this is my just reward 
for my pains and diligence, not regarding my service to 
God, but only my duty to my prince." The news of his 
death was quickly carried to the King, who was amusing 
himself with archery in the garden of the magnificent 
Palace at Hampton Court, which that very Wolsey had 
had presented to him. The greatest emotion his royal 
mind displayed at the loss of a servant so faithful and so 
ruined, was a particular desire to lay hold of fifteen hun- 
dred pounds which the Cardinal was reported to have 
hidden somewhere. 

The opinions concerning the divorce, of the learned 
doctors and bishops and others, being at last collected, 
and being generally in the King's favor, was forwarded 
to the Pope, with an entreaty that he would now grant 
it. The unfortunate Pope, who was a timid man, was 
half distracted between his fear of his authority being 
set aside in England if he did not do as he was asked, 
and his dread of offending the Emperor of Germany, who 
was Queen Catherine's nephew. In this state of mind, 
he still evaded and did nothing. Then, Thomas Crom- 
well, who had been one of Wolsey's faithful attendants, 
and had remained so even in his decline, advised the King 
to take the matter into his own hands, and make himself 
the head of the whole Church. This, the King by vari- 
ous artful means began to do ; but he recompensed the 
clergy by allowing them to burn as many people fts. they 



256 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

pleased for holding Luther's opinions. You must under- 
stand that Sir Thomas More, the wise man who had 
helped the King with his book, had been made Chancellor 
in Wolsey's place. But, as he was truly attached to the 
Church as it was even in its abuses, he, in this state of 
things, resigned. 

Being now quite resolved to get rid of Queen Catherine, 
and to marry Anne Boleyn without more ado, the King 
made Cranmer Archbishop of Canterbury, and directed 
Queen Catherine to leave the Court. She obeyed ; but 
replied that wherever she went, she was Queen of Eng- 
land still, and would remain so, to the last. The King 
then married Anne Boleyn privately; and the new Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, within half a year, declared his 
marriage with Queen Catherine void, and crowned Anne 
Boleyn Queen. 

She might have known that no good could ever come 
from such wrong, and that the corpulent brute who had 
been so faithless and so cruel to his first wife, could be 
more faithless and more cruel to his second. She might 
have known that, even when he was in love with her, he 
had been a mean and selfish coward, running away, like 
a frightened cur, from her society and her house, when 
a dangerous sickness broke out in it, and when she 
might easily have taken it and died, as several of the 
household did. But, Anne Boleyn arrived at all this 
knowledge too late, and bought it at a dear price. Her 
bad marriage with a worse man came to its natural end. 
Its natural end was not, as we shall too soon see, a nat- 
ural death for her. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

The Pope was thrown into a very angry state of mind 
when he heard of the King's marriage, and fumed exceed- 
ingly. Many of the English monks and friars, seeing 
that their order was in d anger, did the same ; some even 
declaimed against the King in church before his face, and 
were not to be stopped until he himself roared out, 
" Silence ! " The King, not much the worse for this, took 
it pretty quietly ; and was very glad when his Queen 
gave birth to a daughter, who was christened Elizabeth, 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 257 

arid declared Princess of Wales as her sister Mary had 
already been. 

One of the most atrocious features of this reign was 
that Henry the Eighth was always trimming' between 
the reformed religion and the unreformed one ; so that 
the more he quarrelled with the Pope, the more of his 
own subjects he roasted alive for not holding the Pope's 
opinions. Thus, an unfortunate student named John 
Frith, and a poor simple tailor named Andrew Ilewet 
who loved him very much, and said that whatever John 
Frith believed he believed, were burnt in Smithfield — to 
show what a capital Christian the King was. 

But, these were speedily followed by two much greater 
victims, Sir Thomas More, and John Fisher, the Bishop 
of Rochester. The latter, who was a good and amiable 
old man, had committed no greater offence than believing 
in Elizabeth Barton, called the Maid of Kent — another of 
those ridiculous women who pretended to be inspired, 
and to make all sorts of heavenly revelations, though 
they indeed uttered nothing but evil nonsense. For this 
offence — as it was pretended, but really for denying the 
King to be the supreme Head of the Church — he got into 
trouble, and was put in prison ; but, even then, he might 
have been suffered to die naturally (short work having 
been made of executing the Kentish Maid and her prin- 
cipal followers), but that the Pope, to spite the King, 
resolved to make him a cardinal. Upon that the King 
made a ferocious joke to the effect that the Pope might 
send Fisher a red hat — which is the way they make a 
cardinal — but he should have no head on which to wear 
it; and he was tried with all unfairness and injustice, 
and sentenced to death. He died like a noble and virtu- 
ous old man, and left a worthy name behind him. The 
King supposed, I dare say, that Sir Thomas More would 
be frightened by this example; but as he was not to be 
easily terrified, and, thoroughly believing in the Pope, 
had made up his mind that the King was not the right- 
ful Head of the Church, he positively refused to say that 
he was. For this crime he too was tried and sentenced, 
after having been in prison a whole year. When lie was 
doomed to death, and came away from his trial with the 
edge of the executioner's axe turned towards him— as 
was always done in those times when a state prisoner 



258 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

came to that hopeless pass — he bore it quite serenely, and 
gave his blessing to his son, who pressed through the 
crowd in Westminster Hall and kneeled down to receive 
it. But, when he got to the Tower Wharf on his way- 
back to his prison, and his favorite daughter, Margaret 
Roper, a very good woman, rushed through the guards 
again and again, to kiss him and to weep upon his neck, 
he was overcome at last. He soon recovered, and never 
more showed any feeling but cheerfulness and coinage. 
When he was going up the steps of the scaffold to his 
death, he said jokingly to the Lieutenant of the Tower, 
observing that they were weak and shook beneath his 
tread, "I pray you, master Lieutenant, see me safe up; 
and, for my coming down, I can shift for myself." Also 
he said to the executioner, after he had laid his head upon 
the block, "Let me put my beard out of the way; for 
that, at least, has never committed any treason." Then 
his head was struck off at a blow. These two executions 
were worthy of King Henry the Eighth. ^Sir Thomas 
More was one of the most virtuous men in his dominions. 
and the Bishop was one of his oldest and truest friends. 
But to'be a friend of that fellow was almost as dangerous 
as to be his wife. 

When the news of these two murders got to Rome, the 
Pope raged against the murderer more than ever Pope 
raged since the world began, and prepared a Bull, or- 
dering his subjects to take arms against him and dethrone 
him. The King took all possible precautions to keep 
that document out of his dominions, and set to work in 
return to suppress a great number of the English monas- 
teries and abbeys. 

This destruction was begun by a body of commis- 
sioners, of whom Cromwell (whom the King had taken 
into great favor) was the head; and was carried on 
through some few years to its entire completion. There 
is no doubt that many of these religious establishments 
were religious in nothing but in name, and were crammed 
with lazy, indolent, and sensual monks. There is no 
doubt that they imposed upon the people in every pos- 
sible way ; that they had images moved by wires, which 
they pretended were miraculously moved by Heaven ; that 
they had among them a whole ton measure full of teeth; 
all purporting to have come out of the head of one saint, 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 259 

who must indeed have been a very extraordinary person 
with that enormous allowance of grinders ; that they had 
bits of coal which they said had fried Saint Lawrence, and 
bits of toe-nails which they said belonged to other famous 
saints; penknives, and boots, and girdles, which they said 
belonged toothers ; and that all these bits of rubbish were 
called Relics, and adored by the ignorant people. But, on 
the other hand, there is no doubt either, that the King's 
officers and men punished the good monks with the bad; 
did great injustice ; demolished many beautiful things and 
many valuable libraries ; destroyed numbers of paintings, 
stained glass windows, fine pavements, and carvings ; -and 
that the whole court were ravenously greedy and rapacious 
for the division of this great spoil among them. The King 
seems to have grown almost mad. in the ardor of this pur- 
suit ; for he declared Thomas a Becket a traitor, though he 
had been dead so many years, and had his body dug up 
out of his grave. He must have been as miraculous as 
the monks pretended, if they had told the truth, for he 
was found with one head on his shoulders, and they had 
shown another as his undoubted and genuine head* ever 
since his death ; it had brought them vast sums of money, 
too. The gold and jewels on his shrine filled two great 
chests, and eight men tottered as they carried them away. 
How rich the monasteries were you may infer from the 
fact that, when they were all suppressed, one hundred 
and thirty thousand pounds a year — in those days an im- 
mense sum — came to the Crown. 

These things were not done without causing great dis- 
content among the people. The monks had been good 
landlords and hospitable entertainers of all travellers, and 
had been accustomed to give away a great deal of corn, 
and fruit, and meat, and other things. In those days it 
was difficult to change goods into money, iri consequence 
of the roads being very few and very bad, and the carts 
and wagons of the worst description ; and they must 
either have given away some of the good things they 
possessed in enormous quantities, or have suffered them 
to spoil and moulder. So, many of the people missed 
what it was more agreeable to get idly than to work for ; 
and the monks who were driven out of their homes and 
wandered about, encouraged their discontent; and there 
were, consequently, great risings in Lincolnshire and 



260 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

Yorkshire. These were put down by terrific executions, 
from which the monks themselves" did not escape, and 
the King went on grunting and growling in his own fat 
way, like a Royal pig. 

I have told all this story of the religious houses at one 
time, to make it plainer, and to get back to the King's 
domestic affairs. 

The Unfortunate Queen Catherine was by this time 
dead; and the King was by this time as tired of his 
second Queen as he had been of his first. As he had 
fallen in love with Anne when she was in the service of 
Catherine, so he now fell in love with another lady in the 
service of Anne. See how wicked deeds are punished, and 
how bitterly and self-reproachfully the Queen must now 
have thought of her own rise to the throne ! The new fancy 
was a Lady Jane Seymour ; and the King no sooner set 
his mind on her, than he resolved to have Anne Boleyn's 
head. So, he brought a number of charges against Anne, 
accusing her of dreadful crimes which she had never 
committed, and implicating in them her own brother and 
certain gentlemen in her service: among whom one 
Norris, and Mark Smeaton a musician, are best remem- 
bered. As the lords and councillors were as afraid of 
the King and as subservient to him as the meanest 
peasant in England was, they brought in Anne Boleyn 
guilty, and the other unfortunate persons accused with 
her, guilty too. Those gentlemen died like men, with 
the exception of Smeaton, who had been tempted by the 
King into telling lies, which he called confessions, and 
who had expected to be pardoned ; but who, I am very 
glad to say, was not. There was then only the Queen to 
dispose of. She had been surrounded in the Tower with 
women spies ; had been monstrously persecuted and 
foully slandered ; and had received no justice. But her 
spirit rose with her afflictions; and, after having in vain 
tried to soften the King by writing an affecting letter to 
him which still exists, " from her doleful prison in the 
Tower," she resigned herself to death. She said to those 
about her, very cheerfully, that she had heard say the 
executioner was a good one, and that she had a little neck 
(she laughed and clasped it with her hands as she said 
that), and would soon be out of her pain. And she vms soon 
out of her pain, poor creature, on the Greer* inside the 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 261 

Tower, and her body was flung into an old box and put 
away in the ground under the chapel. 

There is a story that the King sat in his palace listen- 
ing very anxiously for the sound of the cannon which was 
to announce this new murder; and that, when he heard 
it come booming on the air he rose up in great spirits 
and ordered out his dogs to go a-hunting. lie was bad 
enough to do it; but whether he did it or not, it is cer- 
tain that he married Jane Seymour the very next day. 

I have not much pleasure in recording that she lived 
just long enough to give birth to a son who was chris- 
tened Edward, and then to die of a fever; for, I cannot 
but think that any woman who married such a ruffian, and 
knew what innocent blood was on his hands, deserved the 
axe that would assuredly have fallen on the neck of Jane 
Seymour, if she had lived much longer. 

Cranmer had done what he could to save some of the 
Church property for purposes of religion and educa- 
tion ; but, the great families had been so hungry to get 
hold of it, that very little could be rescued for such ob- 
jects. Even Miles Coverdale, who did the people the 
inestimable service of translating the Bible into English 
(which the unreformed religion never permitted to be 
done), was left in poverty while the great families clutched 
the Church lands and money. The People had been told 
that when the Crown came into possession of these funds, 
it would not be necessary to tax them ; but they were 
taxed afresh directly afterwards. It was fortunate for 
them, indeed, that so many nobles were so greedy for this 
wealth; since, if it had remained with the Crown, there 
might have been no end to tyranny for hundreds of years. 
One of the most active writers on the Church's side against 
the King was a member of his own family — a sort of dis- 
tant cousin, Reginald Pole by name — who attacked him 
in the most violent manner though he received a pension 
from him all the time), and fought for the Church with 
his pen, day and night. As he was beyond the king's reach 
—being in Italy — the King politely invited him over to 
discuss the subject; hut he, knowing better than to come, 
and wisely staying where he was, the King's rage fell 
upon his brother Lord Montague, the Marquis of Exeter, 
and some other gentlemen ; who were tried for high trea- 
son in corresponding with him and aiding him — which 



262 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. < 

they probably did — and were all executed. The Pope 
made Reginald Pole a cardinal ; but, so much against his 
will, that it is thought he even aspired in his own mind 
to the vacant throne of England, and had hopes of marry- 
ing the Princess Mary. His being made a high priest, 
however, put an end to all that. His mother, the vener- 
able Countess of Salisbury — who was, unfortunately for 
herself, within the tyrant's reach — was the last of his 
relatives on whom his wrath fell. When she was told to 
lay her gray head upon the block, she answered the exe- 
cutioner, " No ! My head never committed treason, and 
if you want it, you shall seize it." So, she ran round and 
round the scaffold with the executioner striking at her, 
and her gray hair bedabbled with blood ; and even when 
they held her down upon the block she moved her head 
about to the last, resolved to be no party toiler own bar- 
barous murder. All this the people bore, as they had 
borne everything else. 

Indeed they bore much more ; for the slow fires of Smith- 
field were continually burning, and people were constantly 
being roasted to death — still to show what a good Chris- 
tian the King was. He defied the Pope and his Bull, which 
was now issued, and had come into England ; but he 
burned innumerable people whose only offence was that 
they differed from the Pope's religious opinions. There 
was a wretched man named Lambert, among others, who 
was tried for this before the King, and with whom six 
bishops argued one after another. When he was quite ex- 
hausted (as well he might be, after six bishops), he threw 
himself on the King's mercy; but the King blustered out 
that he had no mercy for heretics. So, he too fed the fire. 

All this the people bore, and more than all this yet. 
The national spirit seems to have been banished from the 
kingdom at this time. The very people who were executed 
for treason, the very wives and friends of the "bluff" 
King, spoke of him on the scaffold as a good prince and a 
gentle prince — just as serfs in similar circumstances have 
been known to do, under the Sultan and Bashaws of the 
East or under the fierce old tyrants of Russia, who poured 
boiling and freezing water on them alternately, until 
they died. The Parliament were as bad as the rest, and 
gave the King whatever he wanted; among other vile 
Accommodations, they gave him new powers of murder- 



A CHILI? S BISTORT OF ENGLAND. 262 

ing, at his will and pleasure, any one whom he might 
choose to call a traitor. But the worst measure they 
passed was an Act of Six Articles, commonly called at 
the time " the whip with six strings ; " which punished 
offences against the Pope's opinions, without mercy, and. 
enforced the very worst parts of the monkish religion. 
Cranmer would have modified it, if he could ; but, being 
overborne by the Romish party, had not the power. As 
one of the articles declared that priests should not marry, 
and as he was married himself, he sent his wife and 
children into Germany, and began to tremble at his dan- 
ger ; none the less because he was, and had long been, 
the King's friend. This whip of six strings was made 
under the King's own eye. It should never be forgotten 
of him how cruelly he supported the worst of the Popish 
doctrines when there was nothing to be got by opposing 
them. 

This amiable monarch now thought of taking another 
wife. He proposed to the French King to have some of the 
ladies of the French Court exhibited before him, that he 
might make his Royal choice; but the French King an- 
swered that he would rather not have his ladies trotted out 
to be shown like horses at a fair. He proposed to the 
Dowager Duchess of Milan, who replied that she might 
have thought of such a match if she had had two heads ; 
but, that only owning one, she must beg to keep it safe. At 
last Cromwell represented that there was a Protestant 
Princess in Germany—those who held the reformed 
religion were called Protestants, because their lenders 
had protested against the abuses and impositions of the 
unreformed Church — named Anne of Cleves, who was 
beautiful, and would answer the purpose admirably. 
The King said was she a large woman, because he must 
have a fat wife? "O yes," said Cromwell; "she was 
very large, just the thing." On hearing this the King 
sent over his famous painter, Hans Holbein, to take her 
portrait. Hans made her out to be so good-looking that 
the King w r as satisfied, and the marriage was arranged. 
But, whether anybody had paid Hans to touch up the 
picture ; or whether Hans, like one or two other painters, 
flattered a princess in the ordinary way of business, I can- 
not say : all I know is, that when Anne came over and 
the King went to Rochester to meet her, and first saw 



264 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

her without her seeing him, he swore she was " a great 
Flanders mare," and said he would never marry her. Be- 
ing obliged to do it now matters had gone so far, he would 
not give her the presents he had prepared, and would never 
notice her. He never forgave Cromwell his part in the 
affair. His downfall dates from that time. 

It was quickened, by his enemies, in the interests of 
the unreformed religion, putting in the King's way, at a 
state dinner, a niece of the Duke of Norfolk, Catherine 
Howard, a young lady of fascinating manners, though 
small in stature and not particularly beautiful. Falling 
in love with her on the spot, the King soon divorced 
Anne of Cleves after making her the subject of much 
brutal talk, on pretence that she had been previously be- 
trothed to some one else — which would never do for one 
of his dignity — and married Catherine. It is probable 
that on his wedding-day, of all days in the year, he sent 
his faithful Cromwell to the scaffold, and had his head 
struck off. He further celebrated the occasion by burn- 
ing at one time, and causing to be drawn to the fire on 
the same hurdles, some Protestant prisoners for denying 
the Pope's doctrines, and some Rome Catholic prisoners for 
denying his own supremacy. Still the people bore it, and 
not a gentleman in England raised his hand. 

But, by a just retribution, it soon came out that Cath- 
erine Howard, before her marriage, had been really guilty 
of such crimes as the King had falsely attributed to his 
second wife Anne Boleyn ; so, again the dreadful axe 
made the King a widower, and this Queen passed away 
as so many in that reign had passed away before her. As 
an appropriate pursuit under the circumstances, Henry 
then applied himself to superintending the com position of a 
religious book called "A Necessary Doctrine for any 
Christian Man." He must have been a little confused in 
his mind, I think, at about this period ; for he was so false 
to himself as to be true to some one : that some one being 
Cranmer, whom the Duke of Norfolk and others of his 
enemies tried to ruin ; but to whom the King was stead- 
fast, and to whom he one night gave his ring, charging 
him when he should "find himself, next day, accused of 
treason, to show it to the council board. This, Cranmer 
did to the confusion of his enemies. I suppose the King 
thought he might want him a little longer. 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 265 

He married yet once more. Yes, strange to say, he 
found in England another woman who would become his 
wife, and she was Catherine Parr, widow of Lord Lati- 
mer. She leaned towards the reformed religion ; and, it 
is some comfort to know, that she tormented the King 
considerably by arguing a variety of doctrinal points with 
him on all possible occasions. She had very nearly done 
this to her own destruction. After one of these coil versa- 
tions, the King in a very black mood actually instructed 
Gardiner, one of his Bishops who favored the Popish 
opinions, to draw a bill of accusation against her, which 
would have inevitably brought her to the scaffold where 
her predecessors had died, but that one of her friends 
picked up the paper of instructions which had been 
dropped in the palace, and gave her timely notice. She 
.fell ill with terror; but managed the King" so well when 
he came to entrap her into further statements — by saying 
that she had only spoken on such points to divert his mind 
and to get some information from his extraordinary 
wisdom — that he gave her a kiss and called her his 
sweetheart. And, when the Chancellor came next day 
actually to take her to the Tower, the King sent him 
about his business, and honored him with the epithets of 
a beast, a knave, and a fool. So near was Catherine Parr 
to the block, and so narrow was her escape! 

There was war with Scotland in this reign, and a short 
clumsy war with France for favoring Scotland; but, the 
events at home were so dreadful, and leave such an en- 
during stain on the country, that I need say no more of 
what happened abroad. 

A few more horrors, and this reign is over. There was 
a lady, Anne Askew, in Lincolnshire, who inclined to the 
Protestant opinions, and whose husband, being a fierce 
Catholic, turned her out of his house. She came to 
London, and was considered as offending against the six 
articles, and was taken to the Tower, and put upon the 
rack — probably because it was hoped that she might, in 
her agony, criminate some obnoxious persons; if falsely, 
so much the better. She was tortured without uttering 
a cry, until the Lieutenant of the Tower would suffer his 
men to torture her no more; and then two priests who 
were present actually pulled off their robes, and turned 
the wheels of the rack with their own hands, so rending 



266 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

and twisting and breaking her that she was afterwards 
carried to the fire in a chair. She was burned with three 
others, a gentleman, a clergyman, and a tailor; and so 
the world went on. 

Either the King became afraid of the power of the Duke 
of Norfolk, and his son the Earl of Surrey, or they gave 
him some offence, but he resolved to pull them down, to 
follow all the rest who were gone. The son was tried 
first — of course for nothing — and defended himself 
bravely ; but of course he was found guilty, and of course 
he was executed. Then his father was laid hold of, and 
left for death too. 

But the King himself was left for death by a Greater 
King, and the earth was to be rid of him at last. He was 
now a swollen, hideous spectacle, with a great hole in 
his leg, and so odious to every sense that it was dreadful 
to approach him. When he was found to be dying, Cran- 
mer was sent for from his palace at Croydon, and came 
with all speed, but found him speechless. Happily, in 
that hour he perished. He was in the fifty-sixth year of 
his age, and the thirty-eighth of his reign. 

Henry the Eighth had been favored by some Protestant 
writers, because the Reformation was achieved in his 
time. But the mighty merit of it lies with other men 
and not with him ; and it can be rendered none the worse 
by this monster's crimes, and none the better by any de- 
fence of them. The plain truth is, that he was a most in- 
tolerable ruffian, a disgrace to human nature, and a blot 
of blood and grease upon the History of England. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

ENGLAND UNDER EDWAED THE SIXTH. 

Henry the Eighth had made a will, appointing a council 
of sixteen to govern the kingdom for his son while he was 
under age (he was now only ten years old), and another 
council of twelve to help them. The most powerful of the 
first council was the Earl of Hertford, the young 
King's uncle, who lost no time in bringing his nephew 
with great state up to Enfield, and thence to the Tower* 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 267 

It was considered at the time a striking proof of virtue in 
the young King that he was sorry for his father's death ; 
but, as common subjects have that virtue too, sometimes, 
we will say no more about it. 

There was a curious part of the late King's will, requir- 
ing his executors to fulfil whatever promises he had 
made. Some of the court wondering what these might 
be, the Earl of Hertford and the other noblemen inter- 
ested, said that they were promises to advance and enrich 
them. So the Earl of Hertford made himself Duke of 
Somerset, and made his brother Edward Seymour a 
baron; and there were various similar promotions all very 
agreeable to the parties concerned, and very dutiful no 
doubt, to the late King's memory. To be more dutiful 
still, they made themselves rich out of the Church lands, 
and were very comfortable. The new Duke of Somerset 
caused himself to be declared Protector of the kingdom, 
and was, indeed, the King. 

As young Edward the Sixth had been brought up in 
principles of the Protestant religion, everybody knew 
that they would be maintained. But Cranmer, to whom 
they were chiefly intrusted, advanced them steadily and 
temperately. Many superstitious and ridiculous practices 
were stopped ; but practices which were harmless were 
not interfered with. The Duke of Somerset, the Protec- 
tor, was anxious to have the young King engaged in mar- 
riage to the young Queen of Scotland, in order to prevent 
that princess from making an alliance with any foreign 
power ; but, as a large party in Scotland were unfavor- 
able to this plan, he invaded that country. His excuse for 
doing so was, that the Bordermen — that is, the Scotch 
who lived in that part of the country where England and 
Scotland joined — troubled the English very much. But 
there were two sides to this question; for the English 
Bordermen troubled the Scotch too ; and through many 
long years, there were perpetual border quarrels which 
gave rise to numbers of old tales and songs. However, 
the Protector invaded Scotland; and Arran, the Scottish 
Regent, with an army twice as large as his, advanced to 
meet him. They encountered on the banks of the river Esk, 
within a few miles of Edinburgh ; and there, after a little 
skirmish, the Protector made such moderate proposals, 
|n offering to retire if the Scotch would only engage not 



268 A CHILD'S EISTOBY OF ENGLAND. 

to marry their princess to any foreign prince, that the 
Regent thought the English were afraid. But in this he 
made a horrible mistake ; for the English soldiers on land, 
and the English sailors on the water, so set upon the 
Scotch, that they broke and fled, and more than ten thou- 
sand of them were killed. It was a dreadful battle, for 
the fugitives were slain without mercy. The ground for 
four miles, all the way to Edinburgh, was strewn with dead 
men, and with arms, and legs, and heads. Some hid them- 
selves in streams and were drowned ; some threw away 
their armor and were killed running, almost naked; but 
in this battle of Pinkey the English lost only two or 
three hundred men. They were much better clothed 
than the Scotch ; at the poverty of whose appearance 
and country they were exceedingly astonished. 

A Parliament was called when Somerset came back, 
and it repealed the whip with six strings, and did one or 
two other good things; though it unhappily retained the 
punishment of burning for those people who did not make 
believe to believe, in all religious matters, what the Gov- 
ernment had declarefl that they must and should believe. 
It also made a foolish law (meant to put down beggars), 
that any man who lived idly and loitered about for three 
days together, should be burned with a hot iron, made a 
slave, and wear an iron fetter. But this savage absurd- 
ity soon came to an end, and went the way of a great 
many other foolish laws. 

The Protector was now so proud that he sat in Parlia- 
ment before all the nobles, on the right hand of the 
throne. Many other noblemen, who only wanted to be 
as proud if they could get a chance, became his enemies 
of course ; and it is supposed that he came back suddenly 
from Scotland because he had received news that his 
brother, Lord Seymour, was becoming dangerous to him. 
This lord was now High Admiral of England: a very 
handsome man, and a great favorite with Court ladies- 
even with the young Princess Elizabeth, who romped 
with him a little more than the young Princesses in these 
times do with any one. He had married Catherine Parr, 
the late King's widow, who was now dead ; and, to 
strengthen his power, he secretly supplied the young 
King with money. He may even have engaged with 
some of his brother's enemies in a plot to carry the 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 269 

boy off. On these and other accusations, at any rate, he 
was confined in the Tower, impeached, and found guilty; 
his own brother's name being — unnatural and sad to 
tell — the first signed to the warrant for his execution. He 
was executed on Tower Hill, and died denying his treason. 
One of his last proceedings in this world was to write two 
letters, one to the Princess Elizabeth, and one to the Prin- 
cess Mary, which a servant of his took charge of, and con- 
cealed in his shoe. These letters are supposed to have 
Urged them against his brother, and to revenge his death. 
What they truly contained is not known ; but there is no 
doubt that he had, at one time, obtained great influence 
over the Princess Elizabeth. 

All this while, the Protestant religion was making pro- 
gress. The images which the people had gradually come 
to worship, were removed from the churches ; the people 
were informed that they need not confess themselves to 
priests unless they chose ; a common prayer-book was 
drawn up in the English language, which all could 
understand; and many other improvements were made; 
still moderately. For Cranmer was a very moderate 
man, and even restrained the Protestant clergy from 
violently abusing the unreformed religion — as they very 
often did, and which was not a good example. But the 
people were at this time in great distress. The rapacious 
nobility who had come into possession of the Church 
lands, were very bad landlords. They enclosed great 
quantities of ground for the feeding of sheep, which was 
then more profitable than the growing of crops ; and this 
increased the general distress. So the people, who still 
understood little of what was going on about them, and 
still readily believed what the homeless monks told them 
I — many of whom had been their good friends in their 
better days— took it into their heads that all this was 
owing to the reformed religion, and therefore rose in many 
parts of the country. 

The most powerful risings were in Devonshire and 
Norfolk. In Devonshire, the rebellion was so strong that 
ten thousand men united within a few days, and even 
laid siege to Exeter. But Lord Russell, coming to the 
assistance of the citizens who defended that town, defeated 
the rebels ; and, not only hanged the Mayor of one place, 
but hanged the vicar of another from Lis own church 



270 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

steeple. What with hanging and killing by the sword, 
four thousand of the rebels are supposed to have fallen 
in that one county. In Norfolk (where the rising was 
more against the enclosure of open lands than against the 
reformed religion), the popular leader was a man named 
Robert Ket, a tanner of Wymondham. The mob were 
in the first instance, excited against the tanner by one 
John Flowerdew, a gentleman who owed him a grudge : 
but, the tanner was more than a match for the gentleman, 
since he soon got the people on his side, and established 
himself near Norwich with quite an army. There was a 
large oak-tree in that place, on a spot called Moushold 
Hill, which Ket named the Tree of Reformation ; and 
under its green boughs, he and his men sat, in the mid- 
summer weather, holding courts of justice, and debating 
affairs of state. They were even impartial enough to 
allow some rather tiresome public speakers to get up into 
this Tree of Reformation, and point out their errors to 
them, in long discourses, while they lay listening (not 
always without some grumbling and growling) in the 
shade below. At last, one sunny July day, a herald 
appeared below the tree, and proclaimed Ket and all his 
men traitors, unless from that moment they dispersed 
and went home : in which case they were to receive a 
pardon. But, Ket and his men made light of the herald 
and became stronger than ever, until the Earl of Warwick 
went after them with a sufficient force, and cut them all 
to pieces-. A few were hanged, drawn, and quartered, as 
traitors, and their limbs were sent into various country 
places, to be a terror to the people. Nine of them were 
hanged upon nine green branches of the Oak of Refor- 
mation ; and so, for the time, that tree may be said to 
have withered away. 

The Protector, though a haughty man, had compassion 
for the real distresses of the common people, and a sin- 
cere desire to help them. But he was too proud and too 
high in degree to hold even their favor steadily; and 
many of the nobles always envied and hated him, because 
they were as proud and not as high as he. He was at 
this time building a great Palace in the Strand ; to get 
the stone for which he blew up church steeples with gun- 
powder, and pulled down bishops' houses : thus making 
himself still more disliked. At length, his principal 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 271 

enemy, the Earl of Warwick — Dudley by name, and the 
son of that Dudley who had made himself so odious with 
Empson, in the reign of Henry the Seventh — joined with 
seven other members of the Council against him, formed 
a separate Council ; and, becoming stronger in a few days, 
sent him to the Tower under twenty-nine articles of 
accusation. After being sentenced by the Council to the 
forfeiture of all his offices and lands, he was liberated 
and pardoned, on making a very humble submission. 
He was even taken back into the Council again, after 
having suffered this fall, and married his daughter, Lady 
Anne Seymour, to Warwick's eldest son. But such a 
reconciliation was little likely to last, and did not outlive 
a year. Warwick, having got himself made Duke of 
Northumberland, and having advanced the more im- 
portant of his friends, then finished the history by caus- 
ing the Duke of Somerset and his friend Lord Grey, and 
others, to be arrested for treason, in having conspired to 
seize and dethrone the King. They were also accused of 
having intended to seize the new Duke of Northumber- 
land, with his friends Lord Northampton and Lord Pem- 
broke ; to murder them if they found need ; and to raise 
the City to revolt. All this the fallen Protector positively 
denied; except that he confessed to having spoken of the 
murder of those three noblemen, but having never designed 
it. He was acquitted of the charge of treason, and found 
guilty of the other charges ; so when the people — who 
remembered his having been their friend, now that he 
was disgraced and in danger, saw him come out from his 
trial with the axe turned from him — they thought he 
was altogether acquitted, and set up a loud shout of joy. 
But the Duke of Somerset was ordered to be beheaded 
on Tower Hill, at eight o'clock in the morning, and pro- 
clamations were issued bidding the citizens keep at home 
until after ten. They filled the streets, however, and 
crowded the place of execution as soon as it was light ; 
and, with sad faces and sad hearts, saw the once power- 
ful Protector ascend the scaffold to lay his head upon the 
dreadful block. While he was yet saying his last words 
to them with manly courage, and telling them, in par- 
ticular, how it comforted him, at that pass, to have assisted 
in reforming the national religion, a member of the Council 
was seen riding up on horseback. They again though^ 



272 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

that the Duke was saved by bis bringing a reprieve, and 
again shouted for joy. But the Duke himself told them 
they were mistaken, and laid down his head and had it 
struck off at a blow. 

Many of the bystanders rushed forward and steeped 
their handkerchiefs in his blood, as a mark of their 
affection. He had, indeed, been capable of many good 
acts, and one of them was discovered after he was no 
more. The Bishop of Durham, a very good man, had 
been informed against to the Council, when the Duke was 
in power, as having answered a treacherous letter propos- 
ing a rebellion against the reformed religion. As the 
answer could not be found, he could not be declared guilty ; 
but it was now discovered, hidden by the Duke himself 
among some private papers, in his regard for that good 
man. The Bishop lost his office, and was deprived of his 
possessions. 

It is not very pleasant to know that while his uncle 
lay in prison under sentence of death, the young King was 
being vastly entertained by plays, and dances, and sham 
fights : but there is no doubt of it, for he kept a journal 
himself. It is pleasanter to know that not a single Roman 
Catholic was burnt in this reign for holding that religion; 
though two wretched victims suffered for heresy. One, 
a woman named Joan Bocher, for professing some 
opinions that even she could only explain in unintelligible 
jargon. The other, a Dutchman, named Yon Paris, who 
practised as a surgeon in London. Edward was, to his 
credit, exceedingly unwilling to sign the warrant for the 
woman's execution : shedding tears before he did so, and 
telling Cranmer, who urged him to it (though Cranmer 
really would have spared the woman at first, but for her 
own determined obstinacy), that the guilt was not his, 
but that of the man who so strongly urged the dreadful 
act. We shall see, too soon, whether the time ever came 
when Cranmer is likely to have remembered this with 
sorrow and remorse. 

Cranmer and Ridley (at first Bishop of Rochester, and 
afterwards Bishop of London) were the most powerful of 
the clergy of this reign. Others were imprisoned and de- 
prived of their property for still adhering to the unre- 
formed religion ; the most important among whom were 
Gardiner Bishop of Winchester, Heath Bishop of 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 273 

Worcester, Day Bishop of Chichester, and Bonner that 
Bishop of London who was superseded by Ridley. The 
Princess Mary, who inherited her mother's gloomy 
temper, and hated the reformed religion as connected 
with her mother's wrongs a:id sorrows — she knew nothing 
else about it, always refusing to read a single book in 
which it was truly described— held by the unreformed 
religion too, and was the only person in the kingdom for 
whom the old Mass was allowed to be performed ; nor 
would the young King have made that exception even in 
her favor, but for the strong persuasions of Cranmer and 
Ridley. He always viewed it with horror; and when he 
fell into a sickly condition, after having been very ill, first 
of the measles and then of the small-pox, he was greatly 
troubled in mind to think that if he died, and she, the 
next heir to the throne, succeeded, the Roman Catholic 
religion would be set up again. 

This uneasiness, the Duke of Northumberland was not 
slow to encourage; for, if the Princess Mary came to the 
throne, he, who had taken part with the Protestants, was 
sure to be disgraced. Now, the Duchess of Suffolk was 
descended from King Henry the Seventh; and, if !»he re- 
signed what little or no right she had, in favor of her 
daughter Lady Jane Grey, that would be the succession 
to promote the Duke's greatness ; because Lord Guilford 
Dudley, one of his sons, was, at this very time, newly 
married to her. So, he worked upon the King's fears, 
and persuaded him to set aside both the Princess Mary 
and the Princess Elizabeth, and assert his right to ap- 
point his successor. Accordingly the young King handed 
to the Crown lawyers a writing signed half a dozen times 
over by himself, appointing Lady Jane Grey to succeed 
to the Crown, and requiring them to have his will made 
out according to law. They were much against it at 
first, and told the King so; but the Duke of Northumber- 
land — being so violent about it that the lawyers even ex- 
pected him to beat them, and hotly declaring that stripped 
to his shirt he would fight any man in such a quarrel — 
they yielded. Cranmer, also, at first hesitated ; pleading 
that he had sworn to maintain the succession of the 
Crown to the Princess Mary ; but, he was a weak man in 
his resolutions, and afterwards signed the document with 
±he rest of the council. 



2?4 A chilPs EisTonr of je^glanjd, 

It was completed none too soon ; for Edward was now 
sinking in a rapid decline ; and, by way of making him 
better, they handed him over to a woman-doctor who pre- 
tended to be able to cure it. He speedily got worse. On 
the sixth of July, in the year one thousand five hundred 
and fifty-three, he died,, very peaceably and piously, pray- 
ing God, with his last breath, to protect the reformed 
religion. 

This King died in the sixteenth year of his age, and in 
the seventh of his reign. It is difficult to judge what the 
character of one so young might afterwards have become 
among so many bad, ambitious, quarrelling nobles. But, 
he was an amiable boy, of very good abilities, and had 
nothing coarse or cruel or brutal in his disposition — which 
in the son of such a father is rather surprising. 



CHAPTER XXX. 

ENGLAND UNDER MARY. 

The Duke of Northumberland was very anxious to 
keep the young King's death a secret, in order that he 
might get the two Princesses into his power. But, the 
Princess Mary, being informed of that event as she was 
on her way to London to see her sick brother, turned her 
horse's head, and rode away into Norfolk. The Earl* of 
Arundel was her friend, and it was he who sent her 
warning of what had happened. 

As the secret could not be kept, the Duke of Northum- 
berland and the council sent for the Lord Mayor of Lon- 
don and some of the aldermen, and made a merit of telling 
it to them. Then, they made it known to the people, and 
set off to inform Lady Jane Grey that she was to be Queen. 

She was a pretty girl of only sixteen, and was amiable, 
learned, and clever. When the lords who came to her, 
fell on their knees before her, and told her what tidings 
they brought, she was so astonished that she fainted. 
On recovering, she expressed her sorrow for the young 
King's death, and said that she knew she was unfit 
to govern the kingdom ; but that if she must be the 
Queen, she prayed God to direct her. She was then at 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND 275 

Sion House, near Brentford ; and the lords took her down 
the river in state to the Tower, that she might remain 
there (as the custom was) until she was crowned. But 
the people were not at all favorable to Lady Jane, con- 
sidering that the right to be Queen was Mary's, and 
greatly disliking the Duke of Northumberland. They 
were not put into a better humor by the Duke's causing 
a vintner's servant, one Gabriel Pot, to be taken up for 
expressing his dissatisfaction among the crowd, and to 
have his ears nailed to the pillory, and cut off. Some 
powerful men among the nobility declared on Mary's 
side. They raised troops to support her cause, had her 
proclaimed Queen at Norwich, and gathered around her 
at the castle of Framlingham, which belonged to the Duke 
of Norfolk. For, she was not considered so safe as yet, 
but that it was best to keep her in a castle on the seacoast, 
from whence she might be sent abroad, if necessary. 

The Council would have despatched Lady Jane's father, 
the Duke of Suffolk, as the general of the army against 
this force; but, as Lady Jane implored that her father 
might remain with her, and as he was known to be but 
a weak man, they told the Duke of Northumberland that 
he must take the command himself. He was not very 
ready to do so, as he mistrusted the Council much ; but 
there was no help for it, and he set forth with a heavy 
heart, observing to a lord who rode beside him through 
Shoreditch at the head of the troops, that, although the 
people pressed irf great numbers to look at them, they 
were terribly silent. 

And his fears for himself turned out to be well founded. 
While-ire was waiting at Cambridge for further help from 
the Council, the Council took it into their heads to turn 
their backs on Lady Jane's cause, and to take up the 
Princess Mary's. This was chiefly owing to the before- 
mentioned Earl of Arundel, who represented to the Lord 
Mayor and aldermen, in a second interview with those 
sagacious persons, that, as for himself, he did not perceive 
the Reformed religion to be in much danger — which Lord 
Pembroke backed by flourishing his sword as another 
kind of persuasion. The Lord Mayor and aldermen, thus 
enlightened, said there could be no doubt that the Princess 
Mary ought to be Queen. So, she was proclaimed at the 
Cross by St. Paul's, and barrels of wine were given to the 



276 A CHILD'S HISTOBY OF ENGLAND. 

people, and they got very drunk, and danced round blaz^ 
ing bonfires — little thinking, poor wretches, what other 
bonfires would soon be blazing in Queen Mary's -name. 

After a ten days' dream of royalty, Lady Jane Grey 
resigned the Crown with great willingness, saying that 
she had only accepted it in obedience to her father and 
mother; and went gladly back to her pleasant house by 
the river, and her books. Mary then came on towards 
London ; and at Wanstead in Essex, Avas joined by her 
half-sister, the Princess Elizabeth. They passed through 
the Streets of London to the Tower, and there the new 
Queen met some eminent prisoners then confined in it, 
kissed them, and gave them their liberty. Among these 
was that Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, who had been 
imprisoned in the last reign for holding to the unreformed 
religion. Him she soon made chancellor. 

The Duke of Northumberland had been taken prisoner, 
and> together with his son and five others, were quickly 
brought before the Council, lie, not unnaturally, asked 
that Council, in his defence, whether it was treason to 
obey orders that had been issued under the great seal ; and, 
if it were, whether they, who had obeyed them too, ought 
to be his judges ? But they made light of these points; 
and, being resolved to have him out of the way, soon 
sentenced him to death. He had risen into power upon 
the death of another man, and made but a poor show (as 
might be expected) when he himself lay low. He en- 
treated Gardiner to let him live, if it were only in a 
mouse's hole; and, when he ascended the scaffold to be 
beheaded on Tower Hill, addressed the people in a miser- 
able way, saying that he had been incited by others, and 
exhorting them to return to the unreformed religion, 
which he told them was his faith. There seems reason 
to suppose that he expected a pardon even then, in return 
for this confession; but it matters little whether he did 
or not. His head was struck off. John Gates and Sir 
Thomas Palmer, two better and more manly gentlemen, 
suffered with him. 

Mary was now crowned Queen. She was thirty-seven 
years of age, short and thin, wrinkled in the face, and 
very unhealthy. But she had a great liking for show and 
for bright colors, and all the ladies of her Court were 
magnificently dressed. She>had a great liking too for old 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND, %Tt 

customs, without much sense in them; and shew^s oiled 
In the oldest way, and blessed in the oldest way, and done 
all manner of things to in the oldest way, at her corona- 
tion. I hope they did her good. 

She soon began to show her desire to put down the 
Reformed religion, and put up the unreformed one; 
though it was dangerous work as yet, the people being 
something wiser than they used to be. They even cast 
a shower of stones — and among them a dagger — at one 
of the royal chaplains who attacked the Reformed religion 
in a public sermon. But the Queen and her priests went 
steadily on. Ridley, the powerful bishop of the last 
reign, was seized and sent to the Tower. Latimer, also 
celebrated among the Clergy of the last reign, was like- 
wise sent to the Tower, and Cranmer speedily followed. 
Latimer was an aged man ; and, as his guards took him 
through Smithtield, he looked round it and said, "This is 
a place that hath long groaned for me." For he knew 
well, what kind of bonfires would soon be burning. Nor 
was the knowledge confined to him. The prisons were 
fast filled with the chief Protestants, who were there left 
.rotting in darkness, hunger, dirt, and separation from their 
friends; many, who had time left them for escape, fled 
from the kingdom; and the dullest of the people began, 
now, to see what was coming. 

It came on fast. A Parliament was got together ; not 
without strong suspicion of unfairness; and they annulled 
the divorce, formerly pronounced by Cranmer between 
the Queen's mother and King Henry the Eighth, and un- 
made all the laws on the subject of religion that had been 
made in the last King Edward's reign. _ They began 
their proceedings, in violation of the law, by having the 
old mass said before them in Latin, and by turning out 
a bishop who would not kneel down. They also declared 
guilty of treason, Lady Jane Grey for aspiring tc the 
Crown; her husband, for being her husband; and 
Cranmer, for not believing in the mass aforesaid. They 
then prayed the Queen graciously to choose a husband 
for herself, as soon as might be. 

Now, the question who should be the Queen's husband 
had given rise to a great deal of discussion, and to several 
contending parties. Some said Cardinal Pole was the 
man— but the Queen was of opinion that he was not the 



27S A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

man, he being too old and too much of a student. 
Others said that the gallant young Coitrtenay, whom 
the Queen had made Earl of Devonshire, was the man — 
and the Queen thought so too, for a while ; but she 
changed her mind. At last it appeared that Philip, 
Prince of Spain, was certainly the man — though cer- 
tainly not the people's man ; for they detested the idea of 
such a marriage from the beginning to the end, and mur- 
mured that the Spaniard would establish in England, by 
the aid of foreign soldiers, the worst abuses of the Popish 
religion, and even the terrible Inquisition itself. 

These discontents gave rise to a conspiracy for marry- 
ing young Courtenay to the Princess Elizabeth, and set- 
ting them up with popular tumults, all over the king- 
dom, against the Queen. This was discovered in time 
by Gardiner; but in Kent, the old bold country, the 
people rose in their old bold way. Sir Thomas Wy.at, a 
man of great daring was their leader. He raised his 
standard at Maidstone, inarched on to Rochester, es- 
tablished himself in the old castle there, and prepared to 
hold out against the Duke of Norfolk, who came against 
him with a party of the Queen's guards and a body of 
five hundred London men. The London men, however, 
were all for Elizabeth, and not at all for Mary. They 
declared, under the castle walls, for Wyat; the Duke 
retreated ; and Wyat came on to Deptford, at the head 
of fifteen thousand men. 

But these, in their turn, fell away. When he came to 
Southwark, there were only two thousand left. Not 
dismayed by finding the London citizens in arms, and 
the guns at the Tower ready to oppose his crossing the 
river there, Wyat led them off to Kingston-upon- 
Thames, intending to cross the bridge that he kneAv to be 
in that place, and so to work his way round to Ludgate, 
one of the old gates of the city. He found the bridge 
broken down, but mended it, came across, and bravely 
fought his way up Fleet Street to Ludgate Hill. Find- 
ing the gate closed against him, he fought his way back 
again, sword in hand, to Temple Bar. Here, being over- 
powered, he surrendered himself, and three or four hundred 
of his men were taken, besides a hundred killed. Wyat, 
in a moment of weakness (and perhaps of torture) was 
afterwards made to accuse the Princess Elizabeth as his 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OP ENGLAND. 279 

accomplice to some very small extent. But his manhood 
soon returned to him, and he refused to save his life by 
making any more false confessions. He was quartered 
and distributed in the usual brutal way, and from fifty 
to a hundred of his followers were hanged. The rest 
were led out, with halters round their necks, to be par- 
doned, and to make a parade of crying out, "God save 
Queen Mary ! " 

In the danger of this rebellion, the Queen showed her- 
self to be a woman of courage and spirit. She disdained 
to retreat to any place of safety, and went down to the 
Guildhall, sceptre in hand, and made a gallant speech to 
the Lord Mayor and citizens. But on the day after 
Wyat's defeat, she did the most cruel act, even of her 
cruel reign, in signing the warrant for the execution of 
Lady Jane Grey. 

They tried to persuade Lady Jane to accept the uni- 
formed religion ; but she steadily refused. On the morn- 
ing when she was to die, she saw from her window the 
bleeding and headless body of her husband brought back 
in a cart from the scaffold on Tower Hill where he had 
laid down his life. But, as she had declined to see him 
before his execution, lest she should be overpowered and 
not make a good end, so she even now showed a constancy 
arid calmness that will never be forgotten. She came up 
to the scaffold with a firm step and a quiet face, and ad- 
dressed the bystanders in a steady voice. They were not 
numerous ; for she was too young, too innocent and fair, 
to be murdered before the people on Tower Hill, as her 
husband had just been ; so, the place of her execution was 
within the Tower itself. She said that she had done an 
unlawful act in taking what was Queen Mary's right ; 
but that she had done so with no bad intent, and that she 
died a humble Christian. She begged the executioner to 
despatch her quickly, and she asked him, " Will you take 
my head off before I lay me down? " He answered, " No, 
Madam," and then she was very quiet while they band- 
aged her eyes. Being blinded, and unable to see the block 
on which she was to lay her young head, she was seen to 
feel about for it with her hands, and was heard to say, 
confused, "O what shall I do! Where is it?" Then 
they guided her to the right place, and the executioner 
struck off her head. You know too well, now, what 



280 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

dreadful deeds the executioner did in England, through 
many many years, and how his axe descended on the hate- 
ful block through the necks of some of the bravest, wisest, 
and best in the land. But it never struck so cruel and so 
vile a blow as this. 

The father of Lady Jane soon followed, but was little 
pitied. Queen Mary's next object was to lay hold of 
Elizabeth, and this was pursued with great eagerness. 
Five hundred men were sent to her retired house at Ash- 
ridge, by Berkhampstead, with orders to bring her up, 
alive or dead. They got there at ten at night, when she 
was sick in bed. But, their leader followed her lady 
into her bed-chamber, whence she was brought out be- 
times next morning, and put into a litter to be conveyed 
to London. She was so weak and ill, that she was five 
days on the road ; still, she was so resolved to be seen by 
the people that she had the curtains of the litter opened ; 
and so, very pale and sickly, passed through the streets. 
She wrote to her sister, sayhig she was innocent of any 
crime, and asking why she was made a prisoner; but she 
got no answer, and was ordered to the Tower. They 
took her in by the Traitor's Gate, to which she objected, 
but in vain. One of the lords who conveyed her offered 
to cover her with his cloak, as it was raining, but she put 
it away from her, proudly and scornfully, and passed 
into the Tower, and sat down in a courtyard on a stone. 
They besought her to come in out of the wet; but she 
answered that it was better sitting there, than in a worse 
place. At length she went to her apartment, where she 
was kept a prisoner, though not so close a prisoner as at 
Woodstock, whither she was afterwards removed, and 
where she is said to have one day envied a milkmaid 
whom she heard singing in the sunshine as she went 
through the green fields. Gardiner, than whom there 
were not many worse men among the fierce and sullen 
priests, cared little to keep secret his stern desire for her 
death : being used to say that it was of little service to 
shake off the leaves, and lop the branches of the tree of 
heresy, if its root, the hope of heretics, were left. He 
failed, however, in his benevolent design. Elizabeth was, 
at length, released ; and Hatfield House was assigned to 
her as residence, under the cure of one Sir Thomas Pope. 

It would seem that Philip, the Prince of Spain, was a 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND, 281 

main cause of this change in Elizabeth's fortunes. He 
was not an amiable man, being, on the contrary, proud, 
overbearing, and gloomy ; but he and the Spanish lords 
who came over with him, assuredly did discountenance 
the idea of doing any violence to the Princess. It may 
have been mere prudence, but we will hope it was man- 
hood and honor. The Queen had been expecting her 
husband with great impatience, and at length he came, 
to her great 303% though he never cared much for her. 
They were married by Gardiner, at Winchester, and 
there was more holiday-making among the people ; but 
they had their old distrust of this Spanish marriage, in 
which even the Parliament shared. Though the members 
of that Parliament were far from honest, and were 
strongly suspected to have been bought with Spanish 
money/they would pass no bill to enable the Queen to 
set aside the Princess Elizabeth and appoint her own 
successor. 

Although Gardiner failed in this object, as well as in 
the darker one of bringing the Princess to the scaffold, 
he went on at a great pice in the revival of the un reformed 
religion. A new Parliament was packed, in which there 
were no Protestants. Preparations were made to receive 
Cardinal Pole in England as the Pope's messenger, bring- 
ing his holy declaration that all the nobility who had 
acquired Church property, should keep it— which was 
done to enlist their selfish interest on the Pope's side. 
Then a great scene was enacted, which was the triumph 
of the Queen's plans. Cardinal Pole arrived with great 
splendor and dignity, and was received with great pomp. 
The Parliament joined in a petition expressive of their 
sorrow at the change in the national religion, and praying 
him to receive the country again into the Popish Church. 
With the Queen sitting on her throne, and the King on 
one side of her, and the Cardinal on the other, and the 
Parliament present, Gardiner read the petition aloud. 
The Cardinal then made a great speech, and was so oblig- 
ing as to say that all was forgotten and forgiven, and 
that the kingdom was solemnly made Roman Catholic 
again. 

Everything was now ready for the lighting of the terri- 
ble bonfires. The Queen having declared to the Council, 
in writing, that she would wish none of her subjects to 



282 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

be burnt without some of the Council being present, and 
that she would particularly wish there to be good sermons 
at all burnings, the Council knew pretty well what was 
to be done next. So, after the Cardinal had blessed all 
the bishops as a preface to the burnings, the Chancellor 
Gardiner opened a High Court at Saint Mary Overy, on 
the Southwark side of London Bridge, for the trial of 
heretics. Here, two of the late Protestant clergymen, 
Hooper, Bishop of Gloucester, and Rogers, a Prebendary 
of St. Paul's, were brought to be tried. Hooper was tried 
first for being married, though a priest, and for not 
believing in the mass. He admitted both of these accusa- 
tions, and said that the mass was a wicked imposition. 
Then they tried Rogers, who said the same. Next morn- 
ing the two were brought up to be sentenced; and then 
Rogers said that his poor wife, being a German woman 
and a stranger in the land, he hoped might be allowed to 
come to speak to him before he died. To this the inhuman 
Gardiner replied, that she was not his Wife. " Yea, but 
she is, my lord," said Rogers, "and she hath been my 
wife these eighteen years." His request was still refused, 
and they were both sent to Newgate ; all those who stood 
in the streets to sell things, being ordered to put out their 
lights that the people might not see them. But, the 
people stood at their doors with candles in their hands, 
and prayed for them as they went by. Soon afterwards, 
Rogers was taken out of jail to be burnt in Smithfield; 
and, in the crowd as he went along, he saw his poor wife 
and his ten children, of whom the youngest was a little 
baby. And so he was burnt to death. 

The next day, Hooper, who was to be burnt at Glou- 
cester, was brought out to take his last journey, and was 
made to wear a hood over his face that he might not be 
known by the people. But, they did know him for all 
that, down in his own part of the country ; and, when he 
came near Gloucester, they lined the road, making prayers 
and lamentations. His guards took him to a lodging, 
where he slept soundly all night. At nine o'clock next 
morning, he was brought forth leaning on a staff; for he 
had taken cold in prison, and was infirm. The iron stake, 
and the iron chain which was to bind him to it, were fixed 
up near a great elm-tree in a pleasant open place before 
the cathedral, where ? on peaceful Sundays, he had been 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 283 

accustomed to preach and to pray, when he was bishop 
of Gloucester. This tree, which had no leaves then, it 
being February, was rilled with people ; and the priests 
of Gloucester College were looking complacently on from 
a window, and there was a great concourse of spectators 
in every spot from which a glimpse of the dreadful sight 
could be beheld. When the old man kneeled down on 
the small platform at the foot of the stake, and prayed 
aloud, the nearest people were observed to be so attentive 
to his prayers that they were ordered to stand farther 
back ; for it did not suit the Romish Church to have those 
Protestant words heard. His prayers concluded, he went 
up to the stake and was stripped to his shirt, and chained 
ready for the fire. One of his guards had such compassion 
on him that, to shorten his agonies, he tied some packets 
of gunpowder about him. Then they heaped up wood 
and straw and reeds and set them all alight. But, un- 
happily, the wood was green and damp, and there was a 
wind blowing that blew what flame there was, away. 
Thus, through three-quarters of an hour, the good old 
man was scorched and roasted and smoked, as the fire 
rose and sank; and all that time they saw him, as he 
burned, moving his lips in prayer, and beating his breast 
with one hand, even after the other was burnt away and 
had fallen off. 

Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, were taken to Oxford to 
dispute with a commission of priests and doctors about 
the mass. They were shamefully treated ; and it is re- 
corded that the Oxford scholars hissed and howled and 
groaned, and misconducted themselves in an anything 
but a scholarly way. The prisoners were taken back to 
jail, and afterwards tried in St. Mary's Church. They 
were all found guilty. On the sixteenth of the month of 
October, Ridley and Latimer were brought out, to make 
another of the dreadful bonfires. 

The scene of the suffering of these two good Protestant 
men was in the City ditch, near Baliol College. On com- 
ing to the dreadful spot, they kissed the stakes, and then 
embraced each other. And then a learned doctor got up 
into a pulpit which was placed there, and preached a 
sermon from the text, " Though I give my body to be 
burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing." 
When you think of the charity of burning men alive, you 



284 A CHILD'S HISTOBY OF ENGLAND, 

may imagine that this learned doctor had a rather brazen 
face. Ridley would have answered his sermon when it 
came to an end, bnt was not allowed. When Latimer 
was stripped, it appeared that he had dressed himself 
under his other clothes, in a new shroud ; and, as he stood 
in it before all the people, it was noted of him, and long 
remembered, that, whereas he had been stooping and 
feehle but a few minutes' before, lie now stood upright 
and handsome, in the knowledge that he was dying for a 
just and a great cause. Ridley's brother-in-law was there, 
with bags of gunpowder; and when they were both 
chained up, he tied them round their bodies. Then, a 
light was thrown upon the pile to fire it. "Be of good 
comfort, Master Ridley," said Latimer, at that awful 
moment, "and play the man! We shall this day light 
such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall 
never be put out." And then he was seen to make motions 
with his hands as if he were washing them in the flames, 
and to stroke his aged face with them, and was heard to 
cry, " Father of Heaven, receive my soul ! " He died 
quickly, but the tire, after having burned the legs of 
Ridley, sunk. There he lingered, chained to the iron 
post, and crying, "O! I cannot burn! O! for Christ's 
sake let the fire come unto me!" And still, when his 
brother-in-law had heaped on more wood, he was heard 
through the blinding smoke still dismally crying, "O! I 
cannot burn, I cannot burn ! " At last, the gunpowder 
caught fire, and ended his miseries. 

Five days after this fearful scene, Gardiner went to his 
tremendous account before God, for the cruelties he had 
so much assisted in committing. 

Cranmer remained still alive and in prison. He was 
brought out again in February, for more examining and 
trying, by Bonner Bishop of London : another man of 
blood, who had succeeded to Gardiner's work, even in his 
lifetime, when Gardiner was tired of it. Cranmer was 
now degraded as a priest, and left for death ; but, if the 
Queen hated any one on earth, she hated him, and it was 
resolved that he should be ruined and disgraced to the 
utmost. There is no doubt that the Queen and her hus- 
band personally urged on these deeds, because they wrote 
to the Council, urging them to be active in the kindling 
of the fearful fires. As Cranmer was known not to be & 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 285 

firm man, a plan was laid for surrounding him with artful 
people, and inducing him to recant to the unreformed 
religion. Deans and friars visited him, played at bowls 
with him, showed him various attentions, talked persua- 
sively with him, gave him money for his prison comforts, 
and induced him to sign, I fear, as many as six recanta- 
tions. But when, after all, he was taken out to be burnt, 
he was nobly true to his better self, and made a glorious 
end. 

After prayers and a sermon, Dr. Cole, the preacher of 
the day (who had been one of the artful priests about 
Cranmer in prison), required him to make a public con- 
fession of his faith before the people. This, Cole did, 
expecting that he would declare himself a Roman Catholic. 
" I will make a profession of my faith," said Cranmer, 
" and with a good-will too." 

Then, he arose before them all, and took from the 
sleeve of his robe a written prayer and read it aloud. 
That done, he kneeled and said the Lord's Prayer, all the 
people joining; and then he arose again and told them 
that he believed in the Bible, and that in what he had 
lately written, he had written what was not the truth, 
and that, because his right hand had signed those papers, 
he would burn his right hand first when he came to the 
fire. As for the Pope, he did refuse him and denounce 
him as the enemy of Heaven. Hereupon the pious Dr. 
Cole cried out to the guards to stop that heretic's mouth 
and take him away. 

So they took him away, and chained him to the stake, 
where he hastily took off his own clothes to make ready for 
the flames. And he stood before the people with a bald 
head and a white and flowing beard. He was so firm now, 
when the worst was come, that he again declared against 
his recantation, and was so impressive and so undismayed, 
that a certain lord, who was one of the directors of the 
execution, called out to the men to make haste ! When 
the fire was lighted, Cranmer, true to his latest word, 
stretched out his right hand, and crying out, " This hand 
hath offended ! " held it among the flames, until it blazed 
and burned away. His heart was found entire among 
his ashes, and he left at last a memorable name in Eng- 
lish tjigtory. Cardinal Pole celebrated the day by saying 



286 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

his first mass, and next day he was made Archbishop of 
Canterbury in Cranmer's place. 

The Queen's husband, who was now mostly abroad in 
his own dominions, and generally made a coarse jest of 
her to his more familiar courtiers, was at war with France, 
and came over to seek the assistance of England. Eng- 
land was very unwilling to engage in a French war for 
his sake; but it happened that the King of France, at 
this very time, aided a descent upon the English coast. 
Hence, war was declared, greatly to Philip's satisfaction ; 
and the Queen raised a sum of money with which to carry 
it on, by every unjustifiable means in her power. It met 
with no profitable return, for the French Duke of Guise 
surprised Calais, and the English sustained a complete 
defeat. The losses they met with in France greatly 
mortified the national pride, and the Queen never re- 
covered the blow. 

There was a bad fever raging in England at this time, 
and I am glad to write that the Queen "took it, and the 
hour of her death came. " When I am dead and my body 
is opened," she said to those around her, " ye shall find 
Calais written on my heart." I should have thought, if 
anything were written on it, they should have found the 
words — Jane Grey, Hooper, Rogers, Ridley, Latimer, 
Cranmer, and three hundred people burnt alive WITHIN" 

FOUR YEARS OF MY WICKED REIGN, INCLUDING SIXTY WOMEN 

and forty little children. But it is enough that their 
deaths were written in Heaven. 

The Queen died on the seventeenth of November, fifteen 
hundred and fifty-eight, after reigning not quite five years 
and a half, and in the forty-fourth year of her age. Car- 
dinal Pole died of the same fever next day. 

As Bloody Cjueen Mary, this woman has become fa- 
mous, and as Bloody Queen Mary, she will ever justly 
be remembered with horror and detestation in Great 
Britain. Her memory has been held in such abhorrence 
that some writers have arisen in later years to take her 
part, and to show that she was, upon the whole, quite an 
amiable and cheerful sovereign! "By their fruits ye 
shall know them," said Our Saviour. The stake and the 
fire were the fruits of this reign, and you will judge this 
Queen by nothing else. 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 287 

CHAPTER XXXI. 

ENGLAND UNDER ELIZABETH. 

First Part. 

There was great rejoicing all over the land when the 
Lords of the Council went down to Hatfield, to hail the 
Princess Elizabeth as the new Queen of England. Weary 
of the barbarities of Mary's reign, the people looked with 
hope and gladness to the new Sovereign. The nation, 
seemed to wake from a horrible dream ; and Heaven, so 
long hidden by the smoke of the fires that roasted men 
and women to death, appeared to brighten once more. 

Queen Elizabeth was five and twenty years of age when 
she rode through the streets of London, from the Tower 
to Westminster Abbey, to be crowned. Her countenance 
was strongly marked, but on the whole, commanding and 
dignified ; her hair was red, and her nose something too 
long and sharp for a woman's. She was not the beauti- 
ful creature her courtiers made out; but she was well 
enough, and no doubt looked all the better for coming 
after the dark and gloomy Mary. She was well educated, 
but a roundabout writer, and rather a hard swearer and 
coarse talker. She was clever, but cunning and deceit- 
ful, and inherited much of her father's violent temper. I 
mention this now, because she has been so over-praised by 
one party, and so over-abused by another, that it is hardly 
possible to understand the greater part of her reign with- 
out first understanding what kind of woman she really 
was. 

She began her reign with the great advantage of hav- 
ing a very wise and careful Minister, Sir William Cecil, 
whom she afterwards made Lord Burleigh. Altogether, 
the people had greater reason for rejoicing than they 
usually had, when there were processions in the streets ; 
and they were happy with some reason. All kinds of 
shows and images were set up; Gog and Magog were 
hoisted to the top of Temple Bar ; and (which was more 
the purpose) the Corporation dutifully presented the young 
Queen with the sum of a thousand marks in gold— so heavy 



288 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

a present, that she was obliged to take it into her car- 
riage with both hands. The coronation was a great suc- 
cess ; and, on the next day, one of the courtiers presented 
a petition to the new Queen, praying that as it was the 
custom to release some prisoners on such occasions, she 
would have the goodness to release the four Evangelists, 
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and also the Apostle 
Saint Paul, who had been for some time shut up in a 
strange language so that the people could not get at them. 
To this, the Queen replied that it would be better first 
to inquire of themselves whether they desired to be re- 
leased or not : and, as a means of finding out, a great 
public discussion— a sort of religious tournament— was 
appointed to take place between certain champions of the 
two religions, in Westminster Abbey. You may suppose 
that it was soon made pretty clear to common sense, 
that for people to benefit by what they repeat or read, it 
is rather necessary they should understand something 
about it. Accordingly, a Church Service in plain English 
was settled, and other laws and regulations were made, 
completely establishing the great work of the Reformation. 
The Romish bishops and champions were not harshly 
dealt with, all things considered; and the Queen's Minis- 
ters were both prudent and merciful. 

The one great trouble of this reign, and the unfortunate 
cause of the greater part of such turmoil and bloodshed 
as occurred in it, was Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots. 
We will try to understand, in as few words as possible, 
who Mary was, what she was, and how she came to be a 
thorn in the royal pillow of Elizabeth. 

She was the daughter of the Queen Regent of Scotland, 
Mary of Guise. She had been married, when a mere 
child, to the Dauphin, the son and heir of the King of 
France. The Pope, who pretended that no one could 
rightfully wear the crown of England without his gra- 
cious permission, was strongly opposed to Elizabeth, who 
had not asked for the said gracious permission. And as 
Mary Queen of Scots would have inherited the English 
crown in right of her birth, supposing the English Par- 
liament not to have altered the succession, the Pope him- 
self, and most of the discontented who were followers of 
his, maintained that Mary was the rightful Queen of Eng- 
land, and Elizabeth the wrongful Queen, Mary being so 



a child 1 ' s msfonr OF MNGLAND. 28§ 

closely connected with France, and France being jealous 
of England, there was far greater danger in this than there 
would have been if she had had no alliance with that great 
power. And when her young husband, on the death of his 
father, became Francis the Second, King of France, the 
matter grew very serious. For the young couple styled 
themselves King and Queen of England, and the Pope was 
disposed to help them by doing all the mischief he could. 

Now the reformed religion, under the guidance of a 
stern and powerful preacher, named John Knox, and other 
such men, had been making fierce progress in Scotland. 
It was still a half savage country, where there was a great 
deal of murdering and rioting continually going on ; and 
the Reformers, instead of reforming those evils as they 
should have done, went to work in the ferocious old Scot- 
tish spirit, laying churches and chapels waste, pulling 
down pictures and altars, and knocking about the Gray 
Friars, and the Black Friars, and the White Friars, and 
the friars of all sorts of colors, in all directions. This 
obdurate and harsh spirit of the Scottish Reformers (the 
Scotch have always been rather a sullen and frowning 
people in religious matters) put up the blood of the Rom- 
ish French court, and caused France to send troops over to 
Scotland, with the hope of setting the friars with all sorts 
of colors on their legs again ; of conquering that country 
first, and England afterwards ; and so crushing the Ref- 
ormation all to pieces. The Scottish Reformers, who had 
formed a great league which they called the Congregation 
of the Lord, secretly represented to Elizabeth that, if the 
reformed religion got the worst of it with them, it would 
be likely to get the worst of it in England too; and thus, 
Elizabeth, though she had a high notion of the rights of 
Kings and Queens to do anything they liked, sent an 
army to Scotland to support the Reformers, who were in 
arms against their sovereign. All these proceedings led 
to a treaty of peace at Edinburgh, under which the French 
consented to depart from the kingdom. By a separate 
treaty, Mary and her young husband engaged to renounce 
their assumed title of King and Queen of England. But 
this treaty they never fulfilled. 

It happened, soon after matters had got to this state, 
that the young French King died, leaving Mary a young 
widow. She was then invited by her Scottish subjects 
l 9 



290 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

to return home and reign over them ; and as she was not 
now happy where she was, she, after a little time, com- 
plied. 

Elizabeth had been Queen three years, when Mary 
Queen of Scots embarked' at Calais for her own rough 
quarrelling country. As she came out of the harbor, a 
-vessel was lost before her eyes, and she said, "O ! good 
God ! what an omen this is for such a voyage ! " She 
was very fond of France, and sat on the deck, looking 
back at it and weeping, until it was quite dark. When 
she went to bed, she directed to be called at daybreak, if 
the French coast were still visible, that she might behold 
it for the last time. As it proved to be a clear morning, 
this was done, and she again wept for the country she 
was leaving, and said many times, " Farewell, France ! 
Farewell, France ! I shall never see thee again ! " All 
this was long remembered afterwards, as sorrowful and 
interesting in a fair young princess of nineteen. Indeed, 
I am afraid it gradually came, together with her other 
distresses, to surround her with greater sympathy than 
she deserved. 

When she came to Scotland, and took up her abode at 
the palace of Holyrood in Edinburgh, she found herself 
among uncouth strangers and wild uncomfortable cus- 
toms very different from her experiences in the court of 
France. The very people who were disposed to love her, 
made her head ache when she was tired out by her voy- 
age, with a serenade of discordant music — a fearful con- 
cert of bagpipes, I suppose — and brought her and her 
train home to her palace on miserable little Scotch horses 
that appeared to be half starved. Among the people who 
were not disposed to love her, she found the powerful 
leaders of the Reformed Church, who were bitter upon 
her amusements, however innocent, and denounced music 
and dancing as works of the devil. John Knox himself 
often lectured her violently and angrily, and did much 
to make her life unhappy. All these reasons confirmed 
her old attachment to the Romish religion, and caused 
her, there is no doubt, most imprudently and danger- 
ously both for herself and for England too, to give a 
solemn pledge to the heads of the Romish Church that 
if she ever succeeded to the English crown, she would set 
up that religion again. In reading her unhappy history, 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND 291 

you must always remember this ; and also that during 
her whole life she was constantly put forward against the 
Queen, in some form or other, by the Romish party. 

That Elizabeth, on the other hand, was not inclined to 
like her, is pretty certain. Elizabeth was very vain and 
jealous, and had an extraordinary dislike to people being 
married. She treated Lady Catherine Grey, sister of the 
beheaded Lady Jane, with such shameful severity, for no 
other reason than her being secretly married, that&he died, 
and her husband was ruined; so, when a second marriage 
for Mary began to be talked about, probably Elizabeth 
disliked her more. Not that Elizabeth wanted suitors of 
her own, for they started up from Spain, Austria, Sweden, 
and England. Her English lover at this time, and one 
whom she much favored too, was Lord Robert Dudley, 
Earl of Leicester — himself secretly married to Amy 
Robsart, the daughter of an English gentleman, whom he 
was strongly suspected of causing to be murdered, down at 
his country seat, Cumnor Hall in Berkshire, that he might 
be free to marry the Queen. Upon this story, the great 
writer, Sir Walter Scott, has founded one of his best 
romances. But if Elizabeth knew how to lead her hand- 
some favorite on, for her own vanity and pleasure, she 
knew how to stop him for her own pride ; and his love, 
and all the other proposals, came to nothing. The Queen 
always declared in good set speeches, that she would never 
be married at all, but would live and die a maiden Queen. 
It was a very pleasant and meritorious declaration I sup- 
pose ; but it has been puffed and trumpeted so much, that 
I am rather tired of it myself. 

Divers princes proposed to marry Mary, but the English 
court had reasons for being jealous of them all, and even 
proposed as a matter of policy that she should marry that 
very Earl of Leicester who had aspired to be the husband 
of Elizabeth. At last, Lord Darnley, son of the Earl of 
Lennox, and himself descended from the Royal Family of 
Scotland, went over with Elizabeth's consent to try nis 
fortune of Holyrood. He was a tall simpleton ; and could 
dance and play the guitar ; but I know of nothing else he 
could do, unless it were to get very drunk, and eat glutton- 
ously, and make a contemptible spectacle of himself in 
many mean and vain ways. However, he gained Mary's 
heart, not disdaining in the pursuit of his object to ally 



292 a child's msfonr of England. 

himself with one of her secretaries, David Rizzio, who had 
great influence with her. He soon married the Queen. 
This marriage does not say much for her, but what 
follows will presently say less. 

Mary's brother, the Bael of Murray, and head of the 
Protestant party in Scotland, had opposed this marriage, 
partly on religious grounds, and partly perhaps from per- 
sonal dislike of the very contemptible bridegroom. When 
it had taken place, through Mary's gaining over to it the 
more powerful of the lords about her, she banished Murray 
for his pains ; and, when he and some other nobles rose in 
arms to support the Reformed religion, she herself, within 
a month of her wedding day, rode against them in armor 
with loaded pistols in her saddle. Driven out of Scotland, 
they presented themselves before Elizabeth — who called 
them traitors in public, and assisted them in private, 
according to her crafty nature. 

Mary had been married but a little while, when she be- 
gan to hate her husband, who, in his turn, began to hate 
that David Rizzio, with whom he had leagued to gain her 
favor, and whom he now believed to be her lover. He 
hated Rizzio to that extent, that he made a compact with 
Lord Ruthven and three other lords to get rid of him by 
murder. This wicked agreement they made in solemn 
secrecy upon the first of March, fifteen hundred and sixty- 
six, and on the night of Saturday the ninth, the conspira- 
tors were brought by Darnley up a private staircase, dark 
and steep, into a range of rooms where they knew that 
Mary was sitting at supper with her sister, Lady Argyle, 
and this doomed man. When they went into the room, 
Darnley took the queen round the waist, and Lord Ruth- 
ven, who had risen from a bed of sickness to do this mur- 
der, came in, gaunt and ghastly, leaning on two men. 
Rizzio ran behind the Queen for shelter and protection. 
" Let him come out of the room," said Ruthven. " He shall 
not leave the room," replied the Queen ; " I read his dan- 
ger in your face, and it is my will that he remain here." 
They then set upon him, struggled with him, overturned 
the table, dragged him out, and killed him with fifty-six 
stabs. When" the Queen heard that he was dead, she 
said, " No more tears. I will think now of revenge ! " 

Within a day or two, she gained her husband over, and 
prevailed on the tall idiot to abandon the conspirators and 



A CHILD'S BISTOBY OF ENGLAND. 293 

fly with her to Dunbar. There, he issued a proclamation, 
audaciously and falsely denying that he had had any 
knowledge of the late bloody business; and there they 
were joined by the Earl Bothwell and some other nobles. 
With their help, they raised eight thoasand men, returned 
to Edinburgh, and drove the assassins into England. 
Mary soon afterwards gave birth to a son — still thinking 
of revenge. 

That she should have had a greater scorn of her hus- 
band after his late cowardice and treachery than she had 
had before, was natural enough. There is little doubt 
that she now began to love Bothwell instead, and to plan 
with him means of getting rid of Darnley. Bothwell had 
such power over her that he induced her even to pardon 
the assassins of Rizzio. The arrangements for the christen- 
ing of the young Prince were intrusted to him, and he 
was one of the most important people at the ceremony, 
where the child was named James : Elizabeth being his 
godmother, though not present on the occasion. A week 
afterwards, Darnley, who had left Mary and gone to his 
father's house at Glasgow, being taken ill with the small- 
pox, she sent her own physician to attend him. But there 
is reason to apprehend that this was merely a show and 
a pretence, and that she knew what was doing, when 
Bothwell within another month proposed to one of the 
late conspirators against Rizzio, to murder Darnley, "for 
that it was the Queen's mind that he should be taken 
away." It is certain that on that very day she wrote to 
her ambassador in France, complaining of him, and yet 
went immediately to Glasgow, feigning to be very anxious 
about him, and to love him very much. If she wanted to 
get him in her power, she succeeded to her heart's content ; 
for she induced him to go back with her to Edinburgh, 
and to occupy, instead of the palace, a lone house outside 
the city called the Kirk of Field. Here he lived for about 
a week. One Sunday night, she remained with him until 
ten o'clock, and then left him, to go to Holyrood to be 
present at an entertainment given in celebration of the 
marriage of one of her favorite servants. At two o'clock 
in the morning the city was shaken by a great explosion, 
and the Kirk of Field was blown to atoms. 

Darnley's body was found next day lying under a tree 
at some distance. How it came there, undisllgured and 



294 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

unscorched by gunpowder, and how this crime came to be 
so clumsily and strangely committed, it is impossible to 
discover. The deceitful character of Mary, and the deceit- 
ful character of Elizabeth, have rendered almost every 
part of their joint history uncertain and obscure. But, I 
fear that Mary was unquestionably a party to her hus- 
band's murder, and that this was the revenge she had 
threatened. The Scotch people universally believed it. 
Voices cried out in the streets of Edinburgh in the dead 
of the night, for justice on the murderess. Placards were 
posted by unknown hands in the public places denouncing 
Bothwell as the murderer, and the Queen as his accom- 
plice; and, when he afterwards married her (though him- 
self already married), previously making a show of taking 
her prisoner by force, the indignation of the people knew 
no bounds. The women particularly are described as 
having been quite frantic against the Queen, and "to have 
hooted and cried after her in the streets with terrific 
vehemence. 

Such guilty unions seldom prosper. This husband and 
wife had lived together but a month, when they were 
separated forever by the successes of a band of Scotch 
nobles who associated against them for the protection of 
the young Prince : whom Bothwell had vainly endeavored 
to lay hold of, and whom he would certainly have mur- 
dered, if the Earl of Mar, in whose hands the boy was, 
had not been firmly and honorably faithful to his trust. 
Before this angry power, Bothwell fled abroad, where he 
died, a prisoner and mad, nine miserable years afterwards. 
Mary being found by the associated lords to deceive them 
at every turn, was sent a prisoner to Lochleven Castle; 
which, as it stood in the midst of a lake, could only be 
approached by boat. Here, one Lord Lindsay, who was 
so much of a brute that the nobles would have clone better 
if they had chosen a mere gentleman for their messenger, 
made her sign her abdication, and appoint Murray Regent 
of Scotland. Here, too, Murray saw her in a sorrowing 
and humbled state. 

She had better have remained in the castle of Lochleven, 
dull prison as it was, with the rippling of the lake against 
it, and the moving shadows of the water on the room- 
walls; but she could not rest there, and more than once 
tried to escape. The first time she had nearly succeeded, 



A CHILD* S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 295 

dressed in the clothes of her own washerwoman, but, 
puttktg up her hand to prevent one of the boatmen from 
lifting her veil, the men suspected her, seeing how white 
it was, and rowed her back again. A short time after- 
wards, her fascinating manners enlisted in her cause a 
boy in the Castle, called the little Douglas, who, while 
the family were at supper, stole the keys of the great 
gate, went softly out with the Queen, locked the gate on 
the outside, and rowed her away across the lake, sinking 
the keys as they went along. On the opposite shore she 
was met by another Douglas, and some few lords; and, 
so accompanied, rode away on horseback to Hamilton, 
where they raised three thousand men. Here, she issued 
a proclamation declaring that the abdication she had 
signed in her prison was illegal, and requiring the Regent 
to yield to his lawful Queen. Being a steady soldier, and 
in no way discomposed although he was without an army, 
Murray pretended to treat with her, until he had collected 
a force about half equal to her own, and then he gave her 
battle. In one quarter of an hour he cut down all her 
hopes. She had another weary ride on horseback of sixty 
long Scotch miles, and took shelter at Dundrennan Abbey, 
whence she fled for safety to Elizabeth's dominions. 

Mary Queen of Scots came to England— to her own ruin, 
the trouble of the kingdom, and the misery and death of 
niall y_in the year one thousand five hundred and sixty- 
eight. How she left it and the world, nineteen years 
afterwards, we have now to see. 

Second Part. 

When Mary Queen of Scots arrived in England, with- 
out money and even without any other clothes than those 
she wore, she wrote to Elizabeth, representing herself as 
an innocent and injured piece of Royalty, and entreating 
her assistance to oblige her Scottish subjects to take her 
back again and obey her. But, as her character was al- 
ready known in England to be a very different one from 
what she made it out to be, she was told in answer that she 
must first clear herself. Made uneasy by this condition, 
Mary, rather than stay in England, would have gone to 
Spain, or to France, or would even have gone back to 
Scotland. But, as her doing either would have been likely 



296 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

to trouble England afresh, it was decided that she should 
be detained here. She first came to Carlisle, and, after 
that, was moved about from castle to castle, as was 
considered necessary ; but England she never left 
again. 

After trying very hard to get rid of the necessity of 
clearing herself, Mary, advised by Lord Herries, her 
best friend in England, agreed to answer the charges 
against her, if the Scottish noblemen who made them 
would attend to maintain them before such English noble- 
men as Elizabeth might appoint for that purpose. Ac- 
cordingly, such an assembly, under the name of a con- 
ference, met, first at York, and afterwards at Hampton 
Court. In its presence Lord Lennox, Darnley's father, 
openly charged Mary with the murder of his son ; and 
whatever Mary's friends may now say or write in her 
behalf, there is no doubt that, when her brother Murray 
produced against her a casket containing certain guilty 
letters and verses which he stated to have passed between 
her and Bothwell, she withdrew from the inquiry. Con- 
sequently, it is to be supposed that she was then con- 
sidered guilty by those who had the best opportunities 
of judging of the truth, and that the feeling which after- 
wards arose in her behalf was a very generous but not a 
very reasonable one. 

However, the Duke of Norfolk, an honorable but 
rather weak nobleman, partly because Mary was capti- 
vating, partly because he was ambitious, partly because he 
was over-persuaded by artful plotters against Elizabeth, 
conceived a strong idea that he would like to marry the 
Queen of Scots — thongh he was a little frightened, too, 
by the letters in the casket. This idea being secretly 
encouraged by some of the noblemen of Elizabeth's court, 
and even by the favorite Earl of Leicester (because it was 
objected to by other favorites who were his rivals), Mary 
expressed her approval of it, and the King of France and 
the King of Spain are supposed to have done the same. 
It was not so quietly planned, though, but that it came 
to Elizabeth's ears, who warned the Duke " to be careful 
what sort of pillow he was going to lay his head upon." 
He made a humble reply at the time ; but turned sulky 
soon afterwards, and, being considered dangerous, was 
sent to the Tower. 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 297 

Thus, from the moment of Mary's coming to England 
she began to be the centre of plots and miseries. 

A rise of the Catholics in the north was the next of 
these, and it was only checked by many executions and 
much bloodshed. It was followed by a great conspir- 
acy of the Pope and some of the Catholic sovereigns of 
Europe to depose Elizabeth, place Mary on the throne, 
and restore the unreformed religion. It is almost impos- 
sible to doubt that Mary knew and approved of this; 
and the Pope himself was so hot in the matter that he 
issued a bull, in which he openly called Elizabeth the 
" pretended Queen " of England, excommunicated her, 
and excommunicated all her subjects who should con- 
tinue to obey her. A copy of this miserable paper got 
into London, and was found one morning publicly posted 
on the Bishop of London's gate. A great hue and cry 
being raised, another copy was found in the chamber of 
a student of Lincoln's Inn, who confessed, being put 
upon the rack, that he had received it from one John 
Felton, a rich gentleman who lived across the Thames, 
near South wark. This John Felton, being put upon the 
rack too, confessed that he had posted the placard on the 
Bishop's gate. For this offence he was, within four days, 
taken to St. Paul's Churchyard, and there hanged and 
quartered. As to the Pope's bull, the people by the 
Reformation having thrown off the Pope did not care 
much, you may suppose, for the Pope's throwing off them. 
It was a mere dirty piece of paper, and not half so power- 
ful as a street ballad. 

On the very day when Felton was brought to his trial, 
the poor Duke of Norfolk was released. It would have 
been well for him if he had kept away from the Tower 
evermore, and from the snares that had taken him there. 
But, even while he was in that dismal place, he corre- 
sponded with Mary, and as soon as he was out of it, he 
began to plot again. Being discovered in correspondence 
with the Pope, with a view to a rising in England which 
should force Elizabeth to consent to his marriage with 
Mary and to repeal the laws against the Catholics, 
he was re-committed to the Tower and brought to 
trial. He was found guilty by the unanimous verdict of 
the Lords who tried him, and was sentenced to the 
block. 



298 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

It is very difficult to make out, at this distance of 
time, and between opposite accounts, whether Elizabeth 
really was a humane woman, or desired to appear so, or 
was fearful of shedding the blood of people of great name 
who were popular in the country. Twice she commanded 
and countermanded the execution of this Duke, and it 
did not take place until five months after his trial. The 
scaffold was erected on Tower Hill and there he died like 
a brave man. He refused to have his eyes bandaged, 
saying that he was not at all afraid of death ; and he 
admitted the justice of his sentence, and was much re- 
gretted by the people. 

Although Mary had shrunk at the most important time 
from disproving her guilt, she was very careful never to 
do anything that would admit It. All such proposals as 
were made to her by Elizabeth for her release, required 
that admission in some form or other, and therefore came 
to nothing. Moreover, both women being artful and 
treacherous, and neither ever trusting the other, it was 
not likely that they could ever make an agreement. So, 
the Parliament, aggravated by what the Pope had done, 
made new and strong laws against the spreading of the 
Catholic religion in England, and declared it treason in 
any one to say that the Queen and her successors were 
not the lawful sovereigns of England. It would have 
done more than this, but for Elizabeth's moderation. 

Since the Reformation, there had come to be three 
great sects of religious people — or people who called 
themselves so — in England; that is to say, those who 
belonged to the Reformed Church, those who belonged 
to the Unreformed Church, and those who were called 
the Puritans, because they said that they wanted, to have 
everything very pure and plain in all the Church service. 
These last were for the most part an uncomfortable 
people, who thought it highly meritorious to dress in a 
hideous manner, talk through their noses, and oppose all 
harmless enjoyments. But they were powerful too, and 
very much in earnest, and they were one and all the de- 
termined enemies of the Queen of Scots. The Protestant 
feeling in England was further strengthened by the tre- 
mendous cruelties to which Protestants were exposed in 
France and in the Netherlands. Scores of thousands of 
them were put to death in those countries with every 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 299 

cruelty that can be imagined, and at last, in the autumn 
of the year one thousand five hundred and seventy-two, 
one of the greatest barbarities ever committed in the 
world took place at Paris. 

It is called in history, The Massacre of Saint Bar- 
tholomew, because it took place on Saint Bartholomew's 
Eve. The day fell on Saturday the twenty-third of 
August. On that day all the great leaders of the Prot- 
estants (who were there called Huguenots) were assem- 
bled together,- for the purpose, as was represented to 
them, of doing honor to the marriage of their chief, 
the young King of Navarre, with the sister of Charles 
the Ninth: a miserable young King who then oc- 
cupied the French throne. This dull creature was 
made to believe by his mother and other fierce Catholics 
about him that the Huguenots meant to take his life ; 
and he was persuaded to give secret orders that, on the 
tolling of a great bell, they should be fallen upon by an 
overpowering force of armed men, and slaughtered 
wherever they could be found. When the appointed 
hour was close at hand, the stupid wretch, trembling 
from head to foot, was taken into a balcony by his mother 
to see the atrocious work begun. The moment the bell 
tolled, the murderers broke forth. During all that night 
and the next two days, they broke into the houses, fired 
the houses, shot and stabbed the Protestants, men, women, 
and children, and flung their bodies into the streets. 
They were shot at in the streets as they passed along, 
and their blood ran down the gutters. Upwards of ten 
thousand Protestants were killed in Paris alone ; in all 
France four or five times that number. To return thanks 
to Heaven for these diabolical murders, the Pope and his 
train actually went in public procession at Rome ; and as if 
this were not shame enough for them, they had a medal 
struck to commemorate the event. But, however comfort- 
able the wholesale murders were to those high authorities, 
they had not that soothing effect upon the doll-Kingi I 
am happy to state that he never knew a moment's peace 
afterwards ; that he was continually crying out that he 
saw the Huguenots covered with blood and wounds falling 
dead before him; and that he died within a year, shriek- 
ing and yelling and raving to that degree, that if all the 
Popes who had ever lived had been rolled into one, they 



300 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

would not have afforded His guilty Majesty the slightest 
consolation. 

When the terrible news of the massacre arrived in 
England, it made a powerful impression indeed upon the 
people. If they began to run a little wild against the 
Catholics at about this time, this fearful reason for it, 
coming so soon after the days of bloody Queen Mary, 
must be remembered in their excuse. The Court was 
not quite so honest as the people — but perhaps it some- 
times is not. It received the French Ambassador, with 
all the lords and ladies dressed in deep mourning and 
keeping a profound silence. Nevertheless, a proposal of 
marriage which he had made to Elizabeth only two days 
before the eve of Saint Bartholomew, on behalf of the 
Duke of Alencon, the French King's brother, a boy of 
seventeen, still went on ; while on the other hand, in her 
usual crafty way, the Queen secretly supplied the Hugue- 
nots with money and weapons. 

I must say that for a Queen who made all those fine 
speeches, of which I have confessed myself to be rather 
tired, about living and dying a Maiden Queen, Elizabeth 
was " going " to be married pretty often. Besides always 
having some English favorite or other whom she by turns 
encouraged and swore at and knocked about — for the 
maiden Queen was very free with her fists — she held 
this French Duke off and on through several years. 
When he at last came over to England, the marriage 
articles were actually drawn up, and it was settled that 
the wedding should take place in six weeks. The Queen 
was then so bent upon it, that she prosecuted a poor 
Puritan named Stubbs, and a poor bookseller named 
Page, for writing and publishing a pamphlet against it. 
Their right hands were chopped off for this crime ; and 
poor Stubbs— more loyal than I should have been my- 
self under the circumstances — immediately pulled off his 
hat with his left hand, and cried, " God save the Queen ! " 
Stubbs was cruelly treated ; for the marriage never took 
place after all, though the Queen pledged herself to the 
Duke with a ring from her own finger. He went away, 
no better than he came, when the courtship had lasted 
some ten years altogether ; and he died a couple of years 
afterwards, mourned by Elizabeth, who appears to have 
been really fond of him. It is not much to her credit* 
for he was a bad enough member of a bad family. 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 301 

To return to the Catholics. There arose two orders of 
priests, who were very busy in England, and who were 
much dreaded. These were the Jesuits (who were every- 
where in all sorts of disguises), and the Seminary 
Priests. The people had a great horror of the first, 
because they were known to have taught that murder 
was lawful if it were done with an object of which they 
approved ; and they had a great horror of the second, 
because they were to teach the old religion, and to be 
the successors of "Queen Mary's priests," as those yet 
lingering in England were called, when they should die 
out. The severest laws were made against them, and 
were most unmercifully executed. Those who sheltered 
them in their houses often suffered heavily for what was 
an act of humanity; and the rack, that cruel torture 
which tore men's limbs asunder, was constantly kept 
going. What these unhappy men confessed, or what was 
ever confessed by any one under that agony, must always 
be received with great doubt, as it is certain that people 
have frequently owned to the most absurd and impossi- 
ble crimes, to escape such dreadful suffering. But I can- 
not doubt it to have been proved by papers, that there 
were many plots, both among the Jesuits, and with. 
France, and with Scotland, and with Spain, for the de- 
struction of Queen Elizabeth, for the placing of Mary on 
the throne, and for the revival of the old religion. 

If the English people were too ready to believe in plots, 
there were, as I have said, good reasons for it. When 
the massacre of Saint Bartholomew was yet fresh in 
their recollection, a great Protestant Dutch hero, the 
Prince of Orange, was shot by an assassin, who con- 
fessed that he had been kept and trained for the purpose 
in a college of Jesuits. The Dutch, in this surprise and 
distress, offered to make Elizabeth their sovereign, but 
she declined the honor, and sent them a small army in- 
stead, under the command of the Earl of Leicester, who, 
although a capital court favorite, was not much of a 
general. He did so little in Holland, that his campaign 
there would probably have been forgotten, but for its 
occasioning the death of one of the best writers, the best 
knights, and the best gentlemen, of that or any age. 
This was Sir Philip Sidney, who was wounded by a 
musket ball in the thigh as he mounted a fresh horse. 



302 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

after having had his own killed under him. He had to 
ride back wounded, a long distance, and was very faint 
with fatigue and loss of blood, when some water, for 
which he had eagerly asked, was handed to him. But 
he was so good and gentle even then, that seeing a poor 
badly wounded common soldier lying on the ground, 
looking at the water with longing eyes, he said, "Thy 
necessity is greater than mine," and gave it up to him. 
This touching action of a noble heart is perhaps as well 
known as any incident in history — is as famous far and 
wide as the blood-stained Tower of London, with its axe, 
and block, and murders out of number. So delightful is 
an act of true humanity, and so glad are mankind to 
remember it. 

At home, intelligence of plots began to thicken every 
day. I suppose the people never did live under such 
continual terrors as those by which they were possessed 
now, of Catholic risings, and burnings, and poisonings, 
and I don't know what. Still, we must always remember 
that they lived near and close to awful realities of that 
kind, and that with their experiences it was not difficult to 
believe in any enormity. The government had the same 
fear, and did not take the best means of discovering the 
truth — for, besides torturing the suspected, it employed 
paid spies, who will always lie for their own profit. It 
even made some of the conspiracies it brought to light, by 
sending false letters to disaffected people, inviting them 
to join in pretended plots, which they too readily did. 

But, one great real plot was at length discovered, and it 
ended the career of Mary, Queen of Scots. A seminary 
priest named Ballard, and a Spanish soldier named 
Savage, set on and encouraged by certain French prissts, 
imparted a design to one Antony Babington — a gentle- 
man of fortune in Derbyshire, who had been for some 
time a secret agent of Mary's — for murdering the Queen. 
Babington then confided the scheme to some other 
Catholic gentlemen who were his friends, and they joined 
in it heartily. They were vain, weak-headed young men, 
ridiculously confident, and preposterously proud of their j 
plan; for they got a gimcrack painting made, of the six 
choice spirits who were to murder Elizabeth, witbJ 
Babington in an attitude for the centre figure. Two of 
£h&ir nurnber ? however, one of whom was a priest, kept 

i 



A CHILD'S HISTOBY OF ENGLAND. 303 

Elizabeth's wisest minister, Sib Francis Walsingham, 
acquainted with the whole project from the first. The 
conspirators were completely deceived to the final point 
when Babington gave Savage, because he was shabby, a 
ring from his finger, and some money from his purse, 
wherewith to buy himself new clothes in which to kill 
the Queen. Walsingham, having then full evidence 
against the whole band, and two letters of Mary's be- 
sides, resolved to seize them. Suspecting something 
wrong, they stole out of the city, one by one, and hid 
themselves in St. John's Wood, and other places which 
really were hiding-places then ; but they were all taken, 
and all executed. When they were seized, a gentleman 
was sent from Court to inform Mary of the fact, and of 
her being involved in the discovery. Her friends have 
complained that she was kept in very hard and severe 
custody. It does not appear very likely, for she was 
going out a-hunting that very morning. 

Queen Elizabeth had been warned long ago, by one in 
France who had good information of what was secretly 
doing, that in holding Mary alive, she held " the wolf who 
would devour her." The Bishop of London had, more 
lately, given the Queen's favorite minister the advice in 
writing, " forthwith to cut off the Scottish Queen's head." 
The question now was, what to do with her ? The Earl 
of Leicester wrote a little note home from Holland, re- 
commending that she should be quietly poisoned; that 
noble favorite having accustomed his mind, it is possible, 
to remedies of that nature. His black advice, however, 
was disregarded, and she was brought to trial at Fother- 
ingay Castle in Northamptonshire, before a tribunal of 
forty, composed of both religions. There, and in the Star 
Chamber at Westminster, the trial lasted a fortnight. 
She defended herself with great ability, but could only 
deny the confessions that had been made by Babington 
and others ; could only call her own letters, produced 
against her by her own secretaries, forgeries; and, in 
short, could only deny everything. She was found guilty, 
and declared to have incurred the penalty of death. The 
Parliament met, approved the sentence, and prayed the 
Queen to have it executed. The Queen replied that she 
requested them to consider whether no means could be 
found of saving Mary's life without endangering her qw&< 



304 ^ CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

The Parliament rejoined, No ; and the citizens illuminated 
their houses and lighted bonfires, in token of their joy 
that all these plots and troubles were to be ended by the 
death of the Queen of Scots. 

She, feeling sure that her time was now come, wrote 
a letter to the Queen of England, making three entreaties ; 
first, that she might be buried in France; secondly, that 
she might not be executed in secret, but before her ser- 
vants and some others ; thirdly, that after her death, her 
servants should not be molested, but should be suffered 
to go home with the legacies she left them. It was an 
affecting letter, and Elizabeth shed tears over it, but sent 
no answer. Then came a special ambassador from 
France, and another from Scotland, to intercede for Mary's 
life; and then the nation began to clamor, more and 
more, for her death. 

What the real feelings or intentions of Elizabeth were, 
can never be known now ; but I strongly suspect her of 
only wishing one thing more than Mary's death, and that 
was to keep free of the blame of it. On the first of 
February, one thousand five hundred and eighty-seven, 
Lord Burleigh having drawn out the warrant for the 
execution, the Queen sent to the secretary Davison to 
bring it to her, that she might sign it; which she did. 
Next day, when Davison told her it was sealed, she 
angrily asked him why such haste was necessary? Next 
day but one, she joked about it, and swore a little. Again, 
next day but one, she seemed to complain that it was not 
yet done, but still she would not be plain with those about 
her. So, on the seventh, the Earls of Kent and Shrews- 
bury, with the Sheriff of Northamptonshire, came with 
the warrant to Fotheringay, to tell the Queen of Scots to 
prepare for death. 

When those messengers of ill omen were gone, Mary 
made a frugal supper, drank to her servants, read over 
her will, went to bed, slept for some hours, and then arose 
and passed the remainder of the night saying prayers. 
In the morning she dressed herself in her best clothes ; 
and, at eight o'clock when the sheriff came for her to her 
chapel, took leave of her servants who w$re there as 
sembled praying with her, and went downstairs, carry- 
ing a Bible in one hand and a crucifix in the other. Two 
of her women and four of her men were allowed to be 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 305 

present in the hall ; where a low scaffold, only two feet 
from the ground, was erected and covered with black ; 
and where the executioner from the Tower, and his assist- 
ant, stood, dressed in black velvet. The hall was full of 
people. While the sentence was being read she sat upon 
a stool ; and, when it was finished, she again denied her 
guilt, as she had done before. The Earl of Kent and the 
Dean of Peterborough, in their Protestant zeal, made 
some very unnecessary speeches to her; to which she 
replied that she died in the Catholic religion, and they 
need not trouble themselves about that matter. When 
her head and neck were uncovered by the executioners, 
she said .that she had not been used to be undressed by 
such hands, or before so much company. Finally, one of 
h'er women fastened a cloth over her face, and she laid 
her neck upon the block, and repeated more than once in 
Latin, " Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit!" 
Some say her head was struck off in two blows, some say 
in three. However that be, when it was held up, stream- 
ing with blood, the real hair beneath the false hair she 
had long worn was seen to be as gray as that of a woman 
of seventy, though she was at that time only in her forty- 
sixth year. All her beauty was gone. 

But she was beautiful enough to her little dog, who 
cowered under her dress, frightened, when she went upon 
the scaffold, and who lay down beside her headless body 
when all her earthly sorrows were over. 

Third Part. 

On its being formally made known to Elizabeth that 
the sentence had been executed on the Queen of Scots, 
she showed the utmost grief and rage, drove her favorites 
from her with violent indignation, and sent Davison to 
the Tower ; from which place he was only released in the 
end by paying an immense fine which completely ruined 
him. Elizabeth not only over-acted her part in making 
these pretences, but most basely reduced to poverty one 
of her faithful servants for no other fault than obeying 
her commands. 

James, King of Scotland, Mary's son, made a show 
likewise of being very angry on the occasion ; but he 
was a pensioner of England to the amount of five thousand 
20 



sob a child's ffismnr of engiand. 

pounds a year, and he had known very little of his mother, 
and he possibly regarded her as the murderer of his father, 
and he soon took it quietly. 

Philip, King of Spain, however, threatened to do greater 
things than ever had been done yet, to set up the Catho- 
lic religion and punish Protestant England. Elizabeth, 
hearing that he and the Prince of Parma were making 
great preparations for this purpose, in order to be before- 
hand with them sent out Admiral Drake (a famous navi- 
gator, who had sailed about the world, and had already 
Drought great plunder from Spain) to the port of Cadiz, 
where he burnt a hundred vessels full of stores. This 
great loss obliged the Spaniards to put off the invasion 
for a year ; but it was none the less formidable for that, 
amounting to one hundred and thirty ships, nineteen 
thousand soldiers, eight thousand sailors, two thousand 
slaves, and between two and three thousand great guns. 
England was not idle in making ready to resist this great 
force. All the men between sixteen years old and sixty, 
were trained and drilled ; the national fleet of ships (in 
number only thirty-four at first) was enlarged by public 
contributions and by private ships, fitted out by noble- 
men ; the city of London, of its own accord, furnished 
double the number of ships and men that it was required 
to provide ; and, if ever the national spirit was up in Eng- 
land, it was up all through the country to resist the 
Spaniards. Some of the Queen's advisers were for seizing 
the principal English Catholics, and putting them to 
death ; but the Queen — who, to her honor, used to say, 
that she would never believe any ill of her subjects, which 
a parent would not believe of her own children — rejected 
the advice, and only confined a few of those who were 
the most suspected, in the fens in Lincolnshire. The 
great body of Catholics deserved this confidence ; for they 
behaved most loyally, nobly, and bravely. 

So, with all England firing up like one strong angry 
man, and with both sides of the Thames fortified, and 
with the soldiers under arms, and with the sailors in 
their ships, the country waited for the coming of the 
proud Spanish fleet, which was called The Invincible 
Armada. The Queen herself, riding in armor on a white 
horse, and the Earl of Essex and the Earl of Leicester 
holding her bridle rein, made a brave speech to the troops 



A OlilZ&S HISTORY OP ENGLAND. 30? 

at Tilbury Fort opposite Gravesend, which was received 
with such enthusiasm as is seldom known. Then came 
the Spanish Armada into the English Channel, sailing 
along in the form of a half moon, of such great size that it 
was seven miles broad. But the English were quickly upon 
it, and woe then to all the Spanish ships that dropped 
a little out of the half moon, for the English took them 
instantly ! And it soon appeared that the great Armada 
was anything but invincible, for on a summer night, bold 
Drake sent eight blazing fire-ships right into the midst 
of it. In terrible consternation the Spaniards tried to get 
out to sea, and so became dispersed ; the English pursued 
them at a great advantage ; a storm came on, and drove 
the Spaniards among rocks and shoals ; and the swift end 
of the Invincible fleet was, that it lost thirty great ships 
and ten thousand men, and defeated and disgraced, sailed 
home again. Being afraid to go by the English Channel, 
it sailed all round Scotland and Ireland; some of the 
ships getting cast away on the latter coast in bad weather, 
the Irish, who were a kind of savages, plundered those 
vessels and killed their crews. So ended this great at- 
tempt to invade and conquer England. And I think it 
will be a long time before any other invincible fleet com- 
ing to England with the same object, will fare much bet- 
ter than the Spanish Armada. 

Though the Spanish king had had this bitter taste of 
English bravery, he was so little the wiser for it, as still 
to entertain his old designs, and even to conceive the 
absurd idea of placing his daughter on the English throne. 
But the Earl of Essex, Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Thomas 
Howard, and some other distinguished leaders, putting 
to sea from Plymouth, entered the port of Cadiz once 
more, obtained a complete victory over the shipping as- 
sembled there, and got possession of the town. In obe- 
dience to the Queen's express instructions, they behaved 
with great humanity ; and the principal loss of the Span- 
iards was a vast sum of money which they had to pay for 
ransom. This was one of many gallant achievements on 
the sea, effected in this reign. Sir Walter Raleigh him- 
self, after marrying a maid of honor and giving offence 
to the Maiden Queen thereby, had already sailed to South 
America in search of gold. 

The Earl of Leicester was now dead, and so was Sir 



308 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

Thomas Walsingham, whom Lord Burleigh was soon to 
follow. The principal favorite was the Earl of Essex, a 
spirited and handsome man, a favorite with the people 
too as well as with the Queen, and possessed of many ad- 
mirable qualities. It was much debated at Court whether 
there should be peace with Spain or no, and he was very 
urgent for war. He also tried hard to have his own way 
in the appointment of a deputy to govern Ireland. One 
day, while this question was in dispute, he hastily took 
offence, and turned his back upon the Queen ; as a gen- 
tle reminder of which impropriety, the Queen gave him 
a tremendous box on the ear, and told him to go to the 
devil. He went home instead, and did not reappear at 
Court for half a year or so, when he and the Queen were 
reconciled, though never (as some suppose) thoroughly. 

From this time the fate of the Earl of Essex and that 
of the Queen seemed to be blended together. The Irish 
were still perpetually quarrelling and fighting among 
themselves, and he went over to Ireland as Lord Lieuten- 
ant, to the great joy of his enemies (Sir Walter Raleigh 
among the rest), who were glad to have so dangerous a 
rival far off. Not being by any means successful there, 
and knowing that his enemies would take advantage of 
that circumstance to injure him with the Queen, he came 
home again, though against her orders. The Queen being 
taken by surprise when he appeared before her, gave him 
her hand to kiss, and he was overjoyed — though it was 
not a very lovely hand by this time — but in the course 
of the same day she ordered him to confine himself to his 
room, and two or three days afterwards had him taken 
into custody. With the same sort of caprice— and as 
capricious an old woman she now was, as ever wore a 
crown or a head either — she sent him broth from her 
own table on his falling ill from anxiety, and cried about 
him. 

He was a man w T ho could find comfort and occupation 
in his books, and he did so for a time; not the least happy 
time, I dare say, of his life. But it happened unfortu- 
nately for him, that lie held a monopoly in sweet wines: 
which means that nobody could sell them without pur- 
chasing his permission. This right, which was only for 
a term, expiring, he applied to have it renewed. The 
Queen refused, with the rather strong observation — but 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 309 

she did make strong observations — that an unruly beast 
must be stinted in his food. Upon this, the angry Earl, 
who had been already deprived of many offices, thought 
himself in danger of complete ruin, and turned against 
the Queen, whom he called a vain old woman who had 
grown as crooked in her mind as she had in her figure. 
These uncomplimentary expressions the ladies of the 
Court immediately snapped up and carried co the Queen, 
whom they did not put in a better temper, you may be v 
lieve. These same Court ladies, when they had beautiful 
dark hair of their own, used to wear faise red hair, to be 
like the Queen. So they were not very high-spirited 
ladies, however high in rank. 

The worst object of the Earl of Essex, and some friends 
of his who used to meet at Lord Southampton's house, 
was to obtain possession of the Queen, and oblige her by 
force to dismiss her ministers and change her favorites. 
On Saturday the seventh of February, one thousand six 
hundred and one, the council suspecting this, summoned 
the Earl to come before them. He, pretending to be ill, 
declined; it was then settled among his friends, that as 
the next day would be Sunday, when many of the citizens 
usually assembled at the Cross by St. Paul's Cathedral, 
he should make one bold effort to induce them to rise and 
follow them to the Palace. 

So, on the Sunday morning, he and a small body of ad- 
herents started out of his house — Essex House by the 
Strand, with steps to the river — having first shut up in 
it, as prisoners, some members of the council who came 
to examine him— and hurried into the City with the Earl 
at their head, crying out " For the Queen ! For the 
Queen!— A plot is laid for my life!" No one heeded 
them, however, and when they came to St. Paul's there 
were no citizens there. In the mean time the prisoners 
of Essex House had been released by one of the Earl's 
own friends; he had been promptly proclaimed a traitor 
in the City itself; and the streets were barricaded with 
carts and guarded by soldiers. The Earl got back to his 
house by water, with difficulty, and after an attempt to 
defend his house against the troops and cannon by which 
it was soon surrounded, gave himself up that night. He 
was brought to trial on the nineteenth, and found guilty; 
on the twenty-fifth, he was executed on Tower Hill, 



310 A CHILD'S B1STOMY OF mGLANB. 

where he died, at thirty-four years old, both courageously 
and penitently. His step-father suffered with him. His 
enemy, Sir Walter Raleigh, stood near the scaffold all the 
time — but not so near it as we shall see him stand, before 
we finish his history. 

In this case, as in the cases of the Duke of Norfolk and 
Mary Queen of Scots, the Queen had commanded and 
countermanded, and again commanded, the execution. 
It is probable that the death of her young and gallant 
favorite in the prime of his good qualities, was never off 
her mind afterwards, but she held out, the same vain, 
obstinate and capricious woman, for another year. Then 
she danced before her Court on a state occasion — and cut, 
I should think, a mighty ridiculous figure, doing so in an 
immense ruff, stomacher and wig, at seventy years old. 
For another year still, she held out, but without any more 
dancing, and as a moody, sorrowful broken creature. At 
last, on the tenth of March, one thousand six hundred and 
three, having been ill of a very bad cold, and made worse 
by the death of the Countess of Nottingham who was her 
intimate friend, she fell into a stupor and was supposed 
to be dead. She recovered her consciousness, however, 
and then nothing would induce her to go to bed ; for she 
said that she knew that if she did, she should never get 
up again. There she lay for ten days, on cushions on the 
floor, without any food, until the Lord Admiral got her 
into bed at last, partly by persuasions and partly by main 
force. When they asked her who should succeed her, 
she replied that her seat had been the seat of Kings, and 
that she would have for her successor, " No rascal's son, 
but a King's." Upon this, the lords present stared at 
one another, and took the liberty of asking whom she 
meant ; to which she replied, " Whom should I mean, 
but our cousin of Scotland ! " This was on the twenty- 
third of March. They asked her once again that day, 
after she was speechless, whether she was still in the 
same mind? She struggled up in bed, and joined her 
hands over her head in the form of a crown, as the only 
reply she could make. At three o'clock next morning, 
she very quietly died, in the forty-fifth year of her reign. 

That reign had been a glorious one, and is made forever 
memorable by the distinguished men who flourished in 
it. Apart from the great voyagers, statesmen, and 



A CffiL&S BISTORT OF ENGLAND. 311 

scholars, whom it produced, the names of Bacon, Spenser, 
and Shakespeare, will always be remembered with pride 
and veneration by the civilized world, and will always 
impart (though with no great reason, perhaps) some por^ 
tion of their lustre to the name of Elizabeth herself. It 
was a great reign for discovery, for commerce, and for 
English enterprise and spirit in general. It was a great 
reign for the Protestant religion and for the Reformation 
which made England free. The Queen was very popular, 
and in her progresses or journeys about her dominions, 
was everywhere received with the liveliest joy. I think 
the truth is, that she was not half so good as she has been 
made out, and not half so bad as she has been made out. 
She had her fine qualities, but she was coarse, capricious, 
and treacherous, and had all the faults of an excessively 
vain young woman long after she was an old one. On 
the whole, she had a great deal too much of her father in 
her, to please me. 

Many improvements and luxuries were introduced in 
the course of these five and forty years in the general 
manner of living; but cock-fighting, bull-baiting, and 
bear-baiting, were still the national amusements ; and a 
coach was so rarely seen, and was such an ugly and 
cumbersome affair when it was seen, that even the Queen 
herself, on many high occasions, rode on horseback on a 
pillion behind the Lord Chancellor. 



CHAPTER XXXII. 

ENGLAND UNDER JAMES THE FIRST. 

Part First. 

"Our cousin of Scotland" was ugly, awkward, and 
shuffling, both in mind and person. His tongue was 
much too large for his mouth, his legs, were much too 
weak for his body, and his dull goggle-eyes stared and 
rolled like an idiot's. He was cunning, covetous, waste- 
ful, idle, drunken, greedy, dirty, cowardly, a great swearer, 
and the most conceited man on earth. His figure — what 
is commonly called rickety from his birth — presented 



312 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

a most ridiculous appearance, dressed in thick padded 
clothes, as a safeguard against being stabbed (of which 
he lived in continual fear), of a grass-green color from 
head to foot, with a hunting-horn dangling at his side in- 
stead of a sword, and his hat and feather sticking over 
one eye, or hanging on the back of his head, as he 
happened to toss it on. He used to loll on the necks of 
his favorite courtiers, and slobber their faces, and kiss and 
pinch their cheeks; and the greatest favorite he ever had, 
used to sign himself, in his letters to his royal master, 
His Majesty's "dog and slave," and used to address his 
majesty as "his Sowship." His majesty was the worst 
rid-31" ever seen, and thought himself the best. He was 
one of the most impertinent talkers (in the broadest Scotch) 
ever heard, and boasted of being unanswerable in all 
manner of argument. He wrote some of the most weari- 
some treatises ever heard — among others, a book upon 
witchcraft, in which he was a devout believer — and 
thought himself a prodigy of authorship. He thought, 
and wrote, and said, that a King had a right to make and 
unmake what laws he pleased, and ought to be accountable 
to nobody on earth. This is the plain true character of 
the personage whom the greatest men about the court 
praised and flattered to that degree, that I doubt if there 
be anything much more shameful in the annals of human 
nature. 

He came to the English throne with great ease. The 
miseries of a disputed succession had been felt so long, 
and so dreadfully, that he was proclaimed within a few 
hours of Elizabeth's death, and was accepted by the nation, 
even without being asked to give any pledge that he 
would govern well, or that he would redress crying griev- 
ances. He took a month to come from Edinburgh to 
London ; and, by way of exercising his new power, hanged a 
pickpocket on the journey without nny trial, and knighted 
everybody he could lay hold of. He made two hundred 
knights before he got to his palace in London, and seven 
hundred before he had been in it three months. He also 
shovelled sixty-two new peers into the House of Lords — 
and there was a pretty large sprinkling of Scotchmen 
among them, you may believe. 

His Sowship's prime Minister, Cecil (for I cannot do 
better than call his majesty what his favorite called him), 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 313 

was the enemy of Sir Walter Raleigh, and also of Sir 
Walter's political friend, Loed Cobham ; and his Sowship's 
first trouble was a plot originated by these two, and en- 
tered into by some others, with the old object of seizing 
the King and keeping him in imprisonment until he should 
change his ministers. There were Catholic priests in 
the plot, and there were Puritan noblemen too; for, 
although the Catholics and Puritans were strongly opposed 
to each other, they united at tnis time against his Sow- 
ship, because they knew that he had a design against 
both, after pretending to be friendly to each ; this design 
being to have only one high and convenient form of 
the Protestant religion, which everybody should be 
bound to belong to, whether they liked it or not. This 
plot was mixed up with another, which may or may not 
have had some reference to placing on the throne, at some 
time, the Lady Arabella Stuart ; whose misfortune it 
was, to be the daughter of the younger brother of his 
Sowship's father, but who was quite innocent of any part 
in the scheme. Sir Walter Raleigh was accused on the 
confession of Lord Cobham — a miserable creature, who 
said one thing at one time, and another thing at another 
time, and could be relied upon in nothing. The trial of 
Sir Walter Raleigh lasted from eight in the morning 
until nearly midnight; he defended himself with such 
eloquence, genius, and spirit against all accusations, and 
against the insults of Coke, the Attorney-General — who, 
according to the custom of the time, foully abused him — 
that those who went there detesting the prisoner, came 
away admiring him, and declaring that anything so won- 
derful and so captivating was never heard. He was 
found guilty, nevertheless, and sentenced to death. Ex- 
ecution was deferred, and he wms taken to the Tower. 
The two Catholic priests, less fortunate, were executed 
with the usual atrocity ; and Lord Cobham and two others 
were pardoned on the scaffold. His Sowship thought it 
wonderfully knowing in him to surprise the people by 
pardoning these three at the very block ; but, blundering, 
and bungling as usual, he had very nearly overreached 
himself. For, the messenger on horseback who brought 
the pardon, came so late, that he was pushed to the out- 
side of the crowd, and was obliged to shout and roar out 
What he came for. The miserable Cobham did not gaiij 



314 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND, 

much by being spared that day. He lived, both as a 
prisoner and a beggar, utterly despised, and miserably 
poor, for thirteen years, and then died in an old outhouse 
belonging to one of his former servants. 

This plot got rid of, and Sir Walter Raleigh safely shut 
up in the Tower, his Sowship held a great dispute with 
the Puritans on their presenting a petition to him, and had 
it all his own way — not so very wonderful, as he would 
talk continually and would not hear anybody else — and 
filled the Bishops with admiration. It was comfortably 
settled that there was to be only one form of religion, and 
that all men were to think exactly alike. But although 
this was arranged two centuries and a half ago, and 
although the arrangement was supported by much fining 
and imprisonment, I do not find that it is quite successful, 
even yet. 

His Sowship, having that uncommonly high opinion of 
himself as a king, had a very low opinion of Parliament 
as a power that audaciously wanted to control him. 
When he called his first Parliament after he had been 
king a" year, he accordingly thought he would take pretty 
high ground with them, and told them that he commanded 
them " as an absolute king." The Parliament thought 
those strong words, and saw the necessity of upholding 
their authority. His Sowship had three children : Prince 
Henry, Prince Charles, and the Princess Elizabeth. It 
would have been well for one of these, and we shall too 
soon see which, if he had learned a little wisdom concern- 
ing Parliaments from his father's obstinacy. 

Now, the people still laboring under their old dread of the 
Catholic religion, this Parliament revived and strength- 
ened the severe laws against it. And this so angered 
Robert Catesby, a restless Catholic gentleman of an old 
family, that he formed one of the most desperate and 
terrible designs ever conceived in the mind of man ; no 
less a scheme than the Gunpowder Plot. 

His object was, when the King, lords, and commons, 
should be assembled at the next opening of Parliament, 
to blow them up, one and all, with a great mine of gun- 
powder. The first person to whom he confided this horri- 
ble idea was Thomas Winter, a Worcestershire gentleman 
who had served in the army abroad, and had been secretly 
employed in Catholic projects. While Viate? was yet 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 315 

undecided, and when he had gone over to the Netherlands, 
to learn from the Spanish Ambassador there whether there 
was any hope of Catholics being relieved through the in- 
tercession of the King of Spain with his Sowship, he found 
at Ostend a tall dark daring man, whom he had known 
when they were both soldiers abroad, and whose name was 
Guido — or Guy — Fawkes. Resolved to join the plot, he 
proposed it to this man knowing him to be the man for 
any desperate deed, and they two came back to England 
together. Here, they admitted two other conspirators : 
Thomas Percy, related to the Earl of Northumberland, 
and John Weight, his brother-in-law. All these met to- 
gether in a solitary house in the open fields which were 
then near Clement's Inn, now a closely blocked-up part of 
London ; and when they had all taken a great oath of 
secrecy, Catesby told the rest what his plan was. They 
then went upstairs into a garret, and received the Sacra- 
ment from Father Gerard, a Jesuit, who is said not to 
have known actually of the Gunpowder Plot, but who, I 
think, must have had his suspicions that there was some- 
thing desperate afoot. 

Percy was a Gentleman Pensioner, and as he had oc- 
casional duties to perform about the Court, then kept at 
Whitehall, there would t»e nothing suspicious in his liv- 
ing at Westminster. So, having looked well about him, 
and having found a house to let, the back of which joined 
the Parliament House, he hired it, of a person named 
Ferris, for the purpose of undermining the wall. Hav- 
ing got possession of this house, the conspirators hired 
another on the Lambeth side of the Thames, which they 
used as a storehouse for wood, gunpowder, and other 
combustible matters. These were to be removed at night 
(and afterwards were removed), bit by hjt, to the house 
at Westminster ; and, that there might be some trusty 
person to keep watch over the Lambeth stores, they ad- 
mitted another conspirator, by name Robert Kay, a very 
poor Catholic gentleman. 

All these "arrangements had been made some months, 
and it was a dark wintry December night, when the con- 
spirators, who had been in the mean time dispersed to 
avoid observation, met in the house at Westminster, and 
began to dig. They had laid in a good stock of eatables, 
to avoid going in and out, and they dug and dug with 



316 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

great ardor. But, the wall being tremendously thick 
and the work very severe, they took into their plot, 
Christopher Wright, a younger brother of John Wright, 
that they might have a new pair of hands to help. And 
Christopher Wright fell to like a fresh man, and they 
dug and dug by night and by clay and Fawkes stood 
sentinel all the time. And if any man's heart seemed to 
fail him at all, Fawkes said, "Gentlemen, we have abun- 
dance of powder and shot here, and there is no fear of our 
being taken alive, even if discovered." The same Fawkes, 
who, in the capacity of sentinel, was always prov ling 
about, soon picked up the intelligence that the King had 
prorogued the Parliament again, from the seventh of 
February, the day first fixed upon, until the third of 
October. When the conspirators knew this, they agreed 
to separate until after the Christmas holidays, and to take 
no notice of each other in the mean while, and never to 
write letters to one another on any account. So, the house 
in Westminster was shut up again, and I suppose the 
neighbors thought that those strange-looking men who 
lived there so gloomily, and went out so seldom, were 
gone away to have a merry Christmas somewhere. 

It was the beginning of February, sixteen hundred and 
five, when Catesby met his fellow-conspirators again at 
this Westminster house. He had now admitted three 
more; John Grant, a Warwickshire gentleman of a 
melancholy temper who lived in a doleful house near 
Stratford-upon-Avon, with a frowning Avail all round it, 
and a deep moat; Robert Winter, eldest brother of 
Thomas ; and Catesby's own servant, Thomas Bates, 
who, Catesby thought, had had some suspicion of what 
his master was about. These three had all suffered more 
or less for their religion in Elizabeth's time. And now, 
they all began to dig again, and they dug and dug by 
night and by day. 

They found it dismal work alone there, underground, 
with such a fearful secret on their minds, and so many 
murders before them. They were filled with wild fancies. 
Sometimes, they thought they heard a great bell tolling, 
deep down in the earth under the Parliament House; 
sometimes, they thought they heard low voices mutter- 
ing about the Gunpowder Plot; once in the morning, 
thev really did hear a great rumbling noise over their 



A CHILD'S HISTOEY OF ENGLAND. 317 

heads, as they dug and sweated in their mine. Every 
man stopped and looked aghast at his neighbor, wonder- 
ing what had happened, when that bold prowler, Fawkes, 
who had been out to look, came in and told them that it 
was only a dealer in coals who had occupied a cellar un- 
der the Parliament House, removing his stock-in trade 
to some other place. Upon this, the conspirators, who 
with all their digging and digging had not yet dug 
through the tremendously thick wall, changed their plan ; 
hired that cellar, which was directly under the House of 
Lords; put six and thirty barrels of gunpowder in it, and 
covered them over with fagots and coals. Then they all 
dispersed again till September, when the following new 
conspirators were admitted ; Sir Edward Baynham, of 
Gloucestershire; Sir Edward Digby, of Rutlandshire; 
Ambrose Rookwood, of Suffolk ; Francis Tresham, of 
Northamptonshire. Most of these were rich, and were to 
assist the plot, some with money and some with horses 
on which the conspirators were to ride through the coun- 
try and rouse the Catholics after the Parliament should 
be blown into air. 

Parliament being again prorogued from the third 
of October to the fifth of November, and the conspir- 
ators being uneasy lest their design should have been 
found out, Thomas Winter said he would go up into the 
House of Lords on the day of the prorogation, and see 
how matters looked. Nothing could be better. The un- 
conscious Commissioners were walking about and talking 
to one another, just over the six and thirty barrels of 
gunpowder. He came back and told the rest so, and they 
went on with their preparations. They hired a ship, and 
kept it ready in the Thames, in which Fawkes was to 
sail for Flanders after firing with a slow match the train 
that was to explode the powder. A number of Catholic 
gentlemen not in the secret, were invited, on pretence of 
a hunting party, to meet Sir Edward Digby at Dunchurch 
on the fatal day, that they might be ready to act together. 
And now all was ready. 

But, now, the great weakness and danger which had 
been all along at the bottom of this wicked plot, began 
to show itself. As the fifth of November drew near, 
most of the conspirators,, remembering that they had 
Mends and relations who would be in the House of Lords 



318 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

that day, felt some natural relenting, and a wish to warn 
them to keep away. They were not much comforted by 
Catesby's declaring that in such a cause he would blow 
up his own son. Lord Mounteagle, Tresham's brother- 
in-law, was certain to be in the house ; and when Tresham 
found that he could not prevail upon the rest to devise 
any means of sparing their friends, he wrote a mysterious 
letter to this lord and left it at his lodging in the dusk, 
urging him to keep away from the opening of Parliament, 
"since God and man had concurred to punish the wicked- 
ness of the times." It contained the words " that the 
Parliament should receive a terrible blow, and yet should 
not see who hurt them." And it added, " the danger is 
past, as soon as you have burnt the letter." 

The ministers and courtiers made out that his Sow- 
ship, by a direct miracle from Heaven, found out what 
this letter meant. The truth is, that they were not long 
(as few men would be) in finding out for themselves ; 
and it was decided to let the conspirators alone, until 
the very day before the opening of Parliament. That 
the conspirators had their fears, is certain ; for, Tresham 
himself said before them all, that they were every one 
dead men ; and, although even he did not take flight, 
there is reason to suppose that he had warned other per- 
sons besides Lord Mounteagle. However, they were all 
firm ; and Fawkes, who was a man of iron, went down 
every day and night to keep watch in the cellar as usual. 
He was there about two in the afternoon of the 
fourth, when the Lord Chamberlain and Lord Mounteagle 
threw open the door and looked in. "Who are you, 
friend ?" said they. "Why," said Fawkes, "I am Mr. 
Percy's servant, and am looking after his store of fuel 
here." — "Your master has laid in a pretty good store," 
they returned, and shut the door, and went away. 
Fawkes, upon this, posted off to the other conspirators 
to tell them all was quiet, and went back and shut him- 
self up in the dark black cellar again, where he heard the 
bell go twelve o'clock and usher in the fifth of November. 
About two hours afterwards, he slowly opened the door, 
and came out to look about him, in his old prowling way. 
He was instantly seized and bound, by a party of soldiers 
under Sir Thomas Knevett. He had a watch upon him, 
some touchwood, some tinder, some slow matches; and 



.4 CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 319 

there was a dark lantern with a candle in it, lighted, be- 
hind the door. He had his boots and spurs on — to ride 
to the ship, I suppose — and it was well for the soldiers 
that they took him so suddenly. If they had left him 
but a moment's time to light a match, he certainly would 
have tossed it in among the powder, and blown up himself 
and them. 

They took him to the King's bed-chamber first of all, 
and there the King (causing him to be held very tight, 
and keeping a good way off) asked him how he could 
have the heart to intend to destroy so many innocent 
people? "Because," said Guy Fawkes, "desperate dis- 
eases need desperate remedies." To a little Scotch 
favorite, with a face like a terrier, who asked him (with 
no particular wisdom) why he had collected so much 
gunpowder, he replied, because he had meant to blow 
Scotchmen back to Scotland, and it would take a deal of 
powder to do that. Next day he was carried to the 
Tower, but would make no confession. Even after being 
horridly tortured, he confessed nothing that the Govern- 
ment did not already know; though he must have been 
in a fearful state — as his signature, still preserved, in 
contrast with his natural handwriting before he was put 
upon the dreadful rack, most frightfully shows. Bates, a 
very different man, soon said the Jesuits had had to do 
with the plot, and probably, under the torture, would as 
readily have said anything. Tresham, taken and put 
in the Tower too, made confessions and unmade them, 
and died of an illness that was heavy upon him. Rook- 
wood, who had stationed relays of his own horses all the 
way to Dunchurch, did not mount to escape till the middle 
of the day, when the news of the plot was all over London. 
On the road he came up with the two Wrights, Catesby, 
and Percy ; and they all galloped together into North- 
amptonshire. Thence to Dunchurch, where they found 
the proposed party assembled. Finding, however, that 
there had been a plot, and that it had been discovered, 
the party disappeared in the course of the night, and left 
them alone with Sir Everard Digby. Away they all rode 
again, through Warwickshire and Worcestershire, to a 
house called Holbeach, on the borders of Staffordshire. 
They tried to raise the Catholics on their way, but were 
Indignantly driven off by them. All this time they were 



820 A CHILD'S HISTOBY OF ENGLAND. 

hotly pursued by the sheriff of Worcester, and a fast 
increasing concourse of riders. At last, resolving to 
defend themselves at Holbeach, they shut themselves up 
in tiie house, and put some wet powder before the fire 
to dry. But it blew up, and Catesby was singed and black- 
ened, and "almost killed, and some of the others were sadly 
hurt. Still, knowing that they must die, they resolved to 
die there, and with only their swords in their hands ap- 
peared at the windows to be shot at by the sherifl: and his 
assistants. Catesby said to Thomas Winter, after Thomas 
had been hit in the right arm which dropped powerless 
by his side, " Stand by me, Tom, and we will die to- 
gether!" — which they did, being shot through the body 
by two bullets from one gun. John Wright, and Chris- 
topher Wright, and Percy, were also shot. Rook wood 
and Digby Were taken : the former with a broken arm 
and a wound in his body too. 

It was the fifteenth of January, before the trial of Guy 
Fawkes, and such of the other conspirators as were left 
aiive, came on. They were all found guilty, all hanged, 
drawn, and quartered : some, in St. Paul's Churchyard, 
on the top of Ludgate Hill ; some, before the Parliament 
House. A Jesuit priest, named Henry Garnet, to whom 
the bloody design was said to have been communicated, 
was taken and tried ; and two of his servants, as well as 
a poor priest who was taken with him, were tortured 
without mercy. He himself was not tortured, but was 
surrounded in the Tower by tamperers and traitors, and 
was so made unfairly to convict himself out of his own 
mouth. He said, upon his trial, that he had done all he 
could to prevent the deed, and that he could not make 
public what had been told him in confession — though I 
am afraid he knew of the plot in other ways. He was 
found guilty and executed, after a manful defence, and 
the Catholic Church made a saint of him ; some rich and 
powerful persons, who had had nothing to do with the 
project, were fined and imprisoned for it by the Star 
Chamber ; the Catholics, in general, who had recoiled 
with horror from the idea of the infernal contrivance, 
were unjustly put under more severe laws than before | 
and this was the end of the Gunpowder Plot. 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 821 

Second Part 

His Sowship would pretty willingly, I think, have blown 
the House of Commons into the air himself ; for, his dread 
and jealousy of it knew no bounds all through his reign. 
When he was hard pressed for money he was obliged to 
order it to meet, as he could get no money without it ; 
and when it asked him first to abolish some of the monop- 
olies in necessaries of life which were a great grievance 
to the people, and to redress other public wrongs, he flew 
into a rage and got rid of it again. At one time he 
wanted it to consent to the Union of England with Scot- 
land, and quarrelled about that. At another time it 
wanted him to put down a most infamous Church abuse, 
called the High Commission Court, and he quarrelled with 
it about that. At another time it entreated him not to be 
quite so fond of his archbishops and bishops who made 
speeches in his praise too awful to be related, but to have 
some little consideration for the poor Puritan clergy who 
were persecuted for preaching in their own way, and not 
according to the archbishops and bishops ; and they quar- 
relled about that. In short, what with hating the House 
of Commons, and pretending not to hate it; and what 
with now sending some of its members who opposed him, 
to Newgate, or to the Tower, and now telling the rest that 
they must not presume to make speeches about the public 
affairs which could not possibly concern them; and what 
with cajoling, and bullying, and frightening, and being 
frightened, the House of Commons was the plague of his 
Sowship's existence. It was pretty firm, however, in 
maintaining its rights, and insisting that the Parliament 
should make the laws, and not the King by his own sin- 
gle proclamations (which he tried hard to do) ; and his 
Sowship was so often distressed for money, in conse- 
quence, that he sold every sort of title and public office 
as if they were merchandise, and even invented a new 
dignity called a Baronetcy, which anybody could buy for 
a thousand pounds. 

These disputes with his Parliaments, and his hunting, 
and his-drinking, and his lying in bed— for he was a great 
sluggard — occupied his Sowship pretty well. The rest of 
his^time he chiefly passed in hugging and slobbering his 
favorites. The first of these was Sib Philip Heebeet, 



§22 A CHILD'S HISTOBY OF ENGLAND. 

who had no knowledge whatever, except of degs, and 
horses, and hunting, but whom he soon made Earl of 
Montgomery. The next, and a much more famous one, 
was Robert Carr. or Ker (for it is not certain which was 
his right name), who came from the Border country, and 
whom he soon made Viscount Rochester, and afterwards, 
Earl of Somerset. The way in which his Sowship doted 
on this handsome young man, is even more odious to 
think of, than the way in which the really great men of 
England condescended to bow before him. The favorite's 
great friend was a certain Sir Thomas Overbury, who 
wrote his love-letters for him, and assisted him in the 
duties of his many high places, which his own ignorance 
prevented him from discharging. But this same Sir 
Thomas having just manhood enough to dissuade the fa- 
vorite from a wicked marriage with the beautiful Count- 
ess of Essex, who was to get a divorce from her husband 
for the purpose, the said Countess, in her rage, got Sir 
Thomas put into the Tower, and there poisoned him. 
Then the favorite and this bad woman were publicly mar- 
ried by the King's pet bishop, with as much to-do and 
rejoicing, as if he had been the best man, and she the best 
woman, upon the face of the earth. 

But, after a longer sunshine than might have been ex- 
pected — of seven years or so, that is to say — another 
handsome young man started up and eclipsed the Earl 
of Somerset. This was George Villiers, the youngest 
son of a Leicestershire gentleman : who came to Court 
with all the Paris fashions on him, and could dance as 
well as the best mountebank that ever was seen. He 
soon danced himself into the good graces of his Sowship, 
and danced the other favorite out of favor. Then, it was 
all at once discovered that the Earl and Countess of So- 
merset had not deserved all those great promotions and 
mighty rejoicings, and they were separately tried for the 
murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, and for other crimes. 
But, the King was so afraid of his late favorite's publicly 
telling some disgraceful things he knew of him — which he 
darkly threatened to do — that he was even examined with 
two men standing, one on either side of him, each with a 
cloak in his hand, ready to throw it over his head and 
stop his mouth if he should break out with what he had 
it in his power to tell. &o, a very lame affair was pur- 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND 323 

posely made of the trial, and his punishment was an allow- 
ance of four thousand pounds a year in retirement, while 
the Countess was pardoned, and allowed to pass into re- 
tirement too. They hated one another by this time, and 
lived to revile and torment each other some years. 

While these events were in progress, and while his 
Sowship was making such an exhibition of himself, from 
day to day and from year to year, as is not often seen in 
any sty, three remarkable deaths took place in England. 
The first was that of the Minister, Robert Cecil, Earl of 
Salisbury, who was past sixty, and had never been strong, 
being deformed from his birth. He said at last that he 
had no wish to live; and no Minister need have had, with 
his experience of the meanness and wickedness of those 
disgraceful times. The second was that of the Lady 
Arabella Stuart, who alarmed his Sowship mightily, by 
privately marrying William Seymour, son of Lord Beau- 
champ, who was a descendant of King Henry the Seventh, 
and who, his Sowship thought, might consequently in- 
crease and strengthen any claim she might one day set 
up to the throne. She was separated from her husband 
(who was put in the Tower) and thrust into a boat to be 
confined at Durham. She escaped in a man's dress to get 
away in a French ship from Gravesend to France, but un- 
happily missed her husband, who had escaped too, and 
was soon taken. She went raving mad in the miserable 
Tower, and died there after four years. The last, and 
the most important of these three deaths, was that of 
Prince Henry, the heir to the throne, in the nineteenth 
year of his age. He was a promising young prince, and 
greatly liked; a quiet, well-conducted youth, of whom 
two very good things are known : first, that his father 
was jealous of him ; secondly, that he was the friend of 
Sir Walter Raleigh, languishing through all those years 
in the Tower, and often said that no man but his father 
would keep such a bird in such a cage. On the occasion 
of the preparations for the marriage of his sister the Prin- 
cess Elizabeth with a foreign prince (and an unhappy 
marriage it turned out) he came from Richmond, where 
he had been very ill, to greet his new brother-in-law, at 
the Palace at Whitehall. There he played a great game 
at tennis, in his shirt, though it was very cold weather, 
and was seized with an alarming illness, and died within 



&24 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

a fortnight of a putrid fever. For this young prince Sir 
Walter Raleigh wrote, in his prison in the Tower, the be- 
ginning of a History of the World : a wonderful instance 
how little his Sowship could do to confine a great man's 
mind, however long he might imprison his body. 

And this mention of Sir Walter Raleigh, who had many 
faults, but who never showed so many merits as in trouble 
and adversity, may bring me at once to the end of his sad 
story. After an imprisonment in the Tower for twelve 
long years, he proposed to resume those old sea voyages 
of his, and to go to South America in search of gold. His 
Sowship, divided between his wish to be on good terms 
with the Spaniards through whose territory Sir Walter 
must pass (he had long had an idea of marrying Prince 
Henry to a Spanish Princess), and his avaricious eager- 
ness to get hold of the gold, did not know what to do. 
Bat, in the end, he set Sir Walter free, taking securities 
for his return ; and Sir Walter fitted out an expedition 
at his own cost, and, on the twenty-eighth of March, one 
thousand six hundred and seventeen, sailed away in 
command of one of its ships, which he ominously called 
the Destiny. The expedition failed; the common men, 
not finding the gold they had expected, mutinied.; a 
quarrel broke out between Sir Walter and the Spaniards, 
who hated him for old successes of his against them; 
and he took and burnt a little town called Saint Thomas. 
For this he was denounced to his Sowship by the Spanish 
Ambassador as a pirate ; and returning almost broken- 
hearted, with his hopes and fortunes shattered, his com- 
pany of friends dispersed, and his brave son (who had been 
one of them) killed, he was taken — through the treachery 
of Sir Lewis Stukely, his near relation, a scoundrel and 
a Vice-Admiral — and was once again immured in his 
prison-home of so many years. 

His Sowship being mightily disappointed in not getting 
any gold, Sir Walter Raleigh was tried as unfairly, and 
with as many lies and evasions as the judges and law 
officers and every other authority in Church and State 
habitually practised under such a King. After a great 
deal of prevarication on all parts but his own, it was 
.-declared that he must die under his former sentence, now 
fifteen years old. So, on the twenty-eighth of October, 
one thousand six hundred and eighteen, he was shut up 



A CHILES HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 325 

Jn the Gate House at Westminster to pass his last night 
on earth, and there he took leave of his good and faithful 
lady, who was worthy to have lived in better days. At 
eight o'clock next morning after a cheerful breakfast, and 
a pipe, and a cup of good wine, he was taken to Old 
Palace Yard in Westminster, where the scaffold was set 
up, and where so many people of high degree were 
assembled to see him die, that it was a matter of some 
difficulty to get him through the crowd. He behaved 
most nobly, but if anything lay heavy on his mind, it was 
that Earl of Essex, whose head he had seen roll off ; and 
he solemnly said that he had had no hand in bringing 
him to the block, and that he had shed tears for him 
when he died. As the morning was very cold, the Sheriff 
said, would he come down to a fire for a little space and 
warm himself ? But Sir Walter thanked him, and said 
no, he would rather it were done at once, for he was ill of 
fever and ague, and in another quarter of an hour his 
shaking fit would come upon him if he were still alive, 
and his enemies might then suppose that he trembled for 

Rear. With that, he kneeled and made a very beautiful 
and Christian prayer. Before he laid his head upon the 
block he felt the edge of the axe, and said, with a smile 
upon his face, that it was a sharp medicine, bat would 
cure the worst disease. When he was bent down ready 
for death, he said to the executioner, finding that he 
hesitated, " What dost thou fear? Strike, man!" So, 
the axe came down and struck his head off, in the sixty- 
sixth year of his age. 

The new favorite got on fast. He was made a viscount, 
he was made Duke of Buckingham, he was made a mar- 
quis, he was made Master of the Horse, he was made 
£ord High Admiral— and the Chief Commander of the 
gallant English forces that had dispersed the Spanish 
Armada, was displaced to make room for him. He had 
the whole kingdom at his disposal, and his mother sold 
all the profits and honors of the State, as if she had kept 
a shop. He blazed all over with diamonds and other pre- 
cious stones, from his hatband and his earrings to his 
shoes. Yet he was an ignorant presumptuous swaggering 
compound of knave and fool, with nothing but his beauty 
and his dancing to recommend him. This is the gentle- 
man who called himself his Majesty's dog and slave, and 



826 A CHILD'S BISTQBY OF ENGLAND. 

called his Majesty Your Sowship. His Sowship called 
him Steenie ; it is supposed, because that was a nick- 
name for Stephen, and because Saint Stephen was gener- 
ally represented in pictures as a handsome saint. 

His Sowship was driven sometimes to his wits'-end by 
his trimming between the general dislike of the Catholic 
religion at home, and his desire to wheedle and flatter it 
abroad, as his only means of getting a rich princess for 
his son's wife : a part of whose fortune he might cram 
into his greasy pockets. Prince Charles — or as his Sow- 
ship called him, Baby Charles — being now Prince of 
Wales, the old project of a marriage with the Spanish 
King's daughter had been revived for him ; and as she 
could not marry a Protestant without leave from the 
Pope, his Sowship himself secretly and meanly wrote to 
his Infallibility asking for it. The negotiation for this 
Spanish marriage takes up a larger space in great books 
than you can imagine, but the upshot of it all is, that 
when it had been held off by the Spanish Court for a 
long time, Baby Charles and Steenie set off in disguise 
as Mr. Thomas Smith and Mr. John Smith, to see the 
Spanish Princess; that Baby Charles pretended to be 
desperately in love with her, and jumped off walls to 
look at her, and made a considerable fool of himself in a 
good many ways ; that she was called Princess of Wales, 
and that the w 7 hole Spanish Court believed Baby Charles 
to be all but dying for her sake, as he expressly told them 
he was ; that Baby Charles and Steenie came back to 
England, and were received with as much rapture as if 
they had been a blessing to it ; that Baby Charles had 
actually fallen in love with Henrietta Maria, the French 
King's sister, whom he had seen in Paris ; that he thought 
it a wonderfully fine and princely thing to have deceived 
the Spaniards, all through ; and that he openly said, with 
a chuckle, as soon as he was safe and sound at home 
again, that the Spaniards were great fools to have be- 
lieved him. 

Like most dishonest men, the Prince and the favorite 
complained that the people whom they had deluded werei 
dishonest. They made such misrepresentations of the! 
treachery of the Spaniards in this business of the Spanish 
match, that the English nation became eager for a war! 
with them. Although the gravest Spaniards laughed at 

; 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 32? 

the idea of his Sowship in a warlike attitude, the Parlia- 
ment granted money for the beginning of hostilities, and 
the treaties with Spain were publicly declared to be at 
an end. The Spanish Ambassador in London — probably 
with the help of the fallen favorite the Earl of Somerset 
— being unable to obtain speech with his Sowship, slipped 
a paper into his hand, declaring that he was a prisoner 
in his own house, and was entirely governed by Bucking- 
ham and his creatures. The first effect of this letter was, 
that his Sowship began to cry and whine, and took Baby 
Charles away from Steenie, and went down to Windsor, 
gabbling all sorts of nonsense. The end of it was that 
his Sowship hugged his dog and slave, and said he was 
quite satisfied. 

He had given the Prince and the favorite almost un- 
limited power to settle anything with the Pope as to the 
Spanish marriage ; and he now, with a view to the French 
one, signed a treaty that all Roman Catholics in England 
should exercise their religion freely, and should never be 
required to take any oath contrary thereto. In return 
fOr this, and for other concessions much less to be de- 
fended, Henrietta Maria was to become the Prince's wife, 
and was to bring him a fortune of eight hundred thousand 
crowns. 

His Sowship's eyes were getting red with eagerly look- 
ing for the money, when the end of a gluttonous life came 
upon him ; and, after a fortnight's illness, on Sunday the 
twenty-seventh of March, one thousand six hundred and 
twenty-five, he died. He had reigned twenty-two years, 
and was fifty-nine years old. I know of nothing more 
abominable in history than the adulation that was lavished 
on this King, and the vice and corruption that such a 
barefaced habit of lying produced in his court. It is much 
tro be doubted whether one man of honor, and not utterly 
self-disgraced, kept his place near James the First. Lord. 
Bacon, that able and wise philosopher, as the First Judge 
in the Kingdom in this reign, became a public spectacle 
of dishonesty and corruption ; and in his base flattery of 
his Sowship, and in his crawling servility to his dog and 
slave, disgraced himself even more. But, a creature like 
his Sowship set upon a throne is like the Plague, and 
everybody receives infection from him. 



828 A CHILD'S HISTOBY Otf ENGLAND. 

CHAPTER XXXIII 

ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES THE FIRST, 

First Part. 

Baby Charles became King Charles the First in the 
twenty-fifth year of his age. Unlike his father, he was 
usually amiable in his private character, and grave and 
dignified in his bearing ; but, like his father, he had mon- 
strously exaggerated notions of the rights of a king, and 
was evasive, and not to be trusted. If his word could 
have been relied upon, his history might have had a differ- 
ent end. 

His first care was to send over that insolent upstart, 
Buckingham, to bring Henrietta Maria from Paris to be 
his Queen; upon which occasion Buckingham — with his 
usual audacity — made love to the young Queen of Austria, 
and was very indignant indeed with Cardinal Richelieu, 
the French Minister, for thwarting his intentions. The 
English people were very well disposed to like their new 
Queen, and to receive her with great favor when she came 
among them as a stranger. But, she held the Protestant 
religion in great dislike, and brought over a crowd of 
unpleasant priests, who made her do some very ridiculous 
things, and forced themselves upon the public notice in 
many disagreeable ways. Hence, the people soon came 
to dislike her, and she soon came to dislike them ; and 
she did so much all through this reign in setting the King 
(who was dotingly fond of her) against his subjects, that 
it would have been better for him if she had never been 
born. 

Now, you are to understand that King Charles the; 
First — of his own determination to be a high and mightyj 
King not to be called to account by anybody, and urged 
on by his Queen besides — deliberately set himself to 
put his Parliament down and to put himself up. You 
are also to understand, that even in pursuit of this wrong 
idea (enough in itself to have ruined any king) he nevei 
took a straight course, but always took a crooked one. 

He was bent upon war with Spain, though neither th^ 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 829 

House of Commons nor the people were quite clear as to 
the justice of that war, now that they began to think a 
little more about the story of the Spanish match. But 
the King rushed into it hotly, raised money by illegal 
means to meet its expenses, and encountered a miserable 
failure at Cadiz in tlie very first year of his reign. An 
expedition to Cadiz had been made in the hope of plunder, 
but as it was not successful, it was necessary to get a 
grant of money from the Parliament ; and when they 
met, in no very complying humor, the King told them, 
"to make haste to let him have it, or it would be the 
worse for themselves." Not put in a more complying 
humor by this, they impeached the King's favorite, the 
Duke of Buckingham, as the cause (which he undoubtedly 
was) of many great public grievances and wrongs. The 
King, to save him, dissolved the Parliament without 
getting the money he wanted ; and when the Lords im- 
plored him to consider and grant a little delay, he replied, 
" No, not one minute." He then began to raise money 
for himself by the following means among others. 

He levied certain duties called tonnage and poundage 
which had not been granted by the Parliament, and could 
lawfully be levied by no other power ; he called upon the 
seaport towns to furnish, and to pay all the cost for three 
months, of a fleet of armed ships; and he required the 
people to unite in lending him large sums of money, the 
Inpayment of which was very doubtful. If the poor 
jpeople refused, they were pressed as soldiers or sailors ; 
|f the gentry refused, they were sent to prison. Five 
iventlemen, named Sir Thomas Darnel, John Corbet, 
VV" alter Earl, John Heveningham, and Everard Hamp- 
den, for refusing were taken up by a warrant of the 
King's privy council, and were sent to prison without any 
bause but the King's pleasure being stated for their im- 
prisonment. Then the question came to be solemnly 
tried, whether this was not a violation of Magna Charta, 
ited an encroachment by the King on the highest rights 
l»f the English people. His lawyers contended No, because 
o encroach upon the rights of the English people would 
j >e to do wrong, and the King could do no wrong. The 
fl.ccommodating judges decided in favor of this wicked 
jkonsense; and here was a fatal division between the 
; £ing and the people. 



330 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

For all this, it became necessary to call another Parlia* 
ment. The people, sensible of the danger in which their 
liberties were, chose for it those who were best known for 
their determined opposition to the King ; but still the 
King, quite blinded by his determination to carry every- 
thing before him, addressed them when they met, in a 
contemptuous manner, and just told them in so many 
words that he had only called them together because he 
wanted money. The Parliament, strong enough and 
resolute enough to know that they would lower his tone, 
cared little for what he said, and laid before him one of 
the great documents of history, which is called the Peti- 
tion of Right, requiring that the free men of England 
should no longer be called upon to lend the King money, 
and should no longer be pressed or imprisoned for refusing 
to do so ; further, that the free men of England should no 
longer be seized by the King's special mandate or warrant, 
it being contrary to their rights and liberties and the laws 
of their country. At first the King returned an answer 
to this petition, in which he tried to shirk it altogether; 
but, the House of Commons then showing their determi- 
nation to go on with the impeachment of Buckingham, 
the King in alarm returned, an answer, giving his consent 
to all that was required of him. He not only afterwards 
departed from his word and honor on these points, over 
and over again, but, at this very time, he did the mean 
and dissembling act of publishing his first-answer and 
not his second— merely that the people might suppose 
that the Parliament had not got the better of him. 

That pestilent Buckingham, to gratify his own wounded 
vanity, had by this time involved the country in war with 
France, as well as with Spain. For such miserable causes 
and such miserable creatures are wars sometimes made ! 
But he was destined to do little more mischief in this 
world. One morning, as he was going out of his house 
to his carriage, he turned to speak to a certain Colonel 
Fryer who was with him ; and he was violently stabbed 
with a knife, which the murderer left sticking in his 
heart. This happened in his hall. He had had angry 
words upstairs, just before, with some French gentlemen, 
who were immediately suspected by his servants, and had 
a close escape of being set upon and killed. In the midst i 
of the noise, the real murderer, who had gone to the 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 331 

kitchen and might easily have got away, drew his sword 
and cried oat, " I am the man ! " His name was John 
Felton, a Protestant and a retired officer in the army. 
He said he had had no personal ill-will to the Duke, but 
had killed him as a curse to the country. He had aimed 
his blow well, for Buckingham had only had time to cry 
out, " Villain ! " and then he drew out the knife, fell 
against a table, and died. 

The council made a mighty business of examining John 
Felton about this murder, though it was a plain case 
enough, one would think. He had come seventy miles 
to do it, he told them, and he did it for the reason he had 
declared ; if they put him upon the rack, as that noble 
Marquis of Dorset whom he saw before him, had the 
goodness to threaten, he gave that marquis warning, that 
he would accuse him as his accomplice ! The King was 
unpleasantly anxious to have him racked, nevertheless ; 
but as the judges now found out that torture was con- 
trary to the law of England— it is a pity they did not 
make the discovery a little sooner — John Felton was 
simply executed for the murder he had done. A murder 
it undoubtedly was, and not in the least to be defended : 
though he had freed England from one of the most prof- 
ligate, contemptible, and base court favorites to whom 
it has ever yielded. 

A very different man now arose. This was Sir Thomas 
Wentworth, a Yorkshire gentleman, who had sat in 
Parliament for a long time, and who had favored arbitrary 
and haughty principles, but who had gone over to the 
| people's side on receiving offence from Buckingham. The 
'King, much wanting such a man— for besides being 
naturally favorable to the King's cause, he had great 
abilities— made him first a J3aron, and then a Viscount, 
and gave him high employment, and won him most com- 
pletely. 

A Parliament, however, was still in existence, and was 
not to be won. On the twentieth of January, one thou- 
sand six hundred and twenty-nine, Sir John Eliot, a grea- 
man who had been active in the Petition of Right, brought 
forward other strong resolutions against the King's chief 
instruments, and called upon the Speaker to put them to 
the vote. To this the Speaker answered, " he was com- 
manded otherwise by the King," and got up to leave the 



832 A CHILD'S HISTOBY OF ENGLAND. 

chair-— which, according to the rules of the House of 
Commons would have obliged it to adjourn without 
doing anything more — when two members, named Mr. 
Hollis and Mb. Valentine, held him down. A scene of 
great confusion arose among the members ; and while 
many swords were drawn and flashing about, the King, 
who was kept informed of all that was going on, told the 
captain of his guard to go down to the House and force 
the doors. The resolutions were by that time, however, 
voted, and the House adjourned. Sir John Eliot and 
those two members who had held the Speaker down, 
were quickly summoned before the council. As they 
claimed it to be their privilege not to answer out of Par- 
liament for anything they had said in it, they were com- 
mitted to the Tower. The King then went down and 
dissolved the Parliament, in a speech wherein he made 
mention of these gentlemen as "Vipers " — which did not 
do him much good that ever I have heard of. 

As they refused to gain their liberty by saying they 
were sorry for what they had done, the King, always re- 
markably unforgiving, never overlooked their offence. 
When they demanded to be brought up before the Court 
of King's Bench, he even resorted to the meanness of hav- 
ing them moved about from prison to prison, so that the 
writs issued for that purpose should not legally find them. 
At last they came before the court and were sentenced to 
heavy fines, and to be imprisoned during the King's 
pleasure. When Sir John Eliot's health had quite given 
way, and he so longed for change of air and scene as to 
petition for his release, the King sent back the answer 
(worthy of his Sowship himself) that the petition was 
not humble enough. When he sent another petition by 
his young son, in which he pathetically offered to go back 
to prison when his health was restored, if he might be 
released for its recovery, the King still disregarded it. 
When he died in the Tower, and his children petitioned 
to be allowed to take his body down to Cornwall, there 
to lay it among the ashes of his forefathers, the King re- 
turned for answer, "Let Sir John Eliot's body be buried 
in the church of that parish where he died." All this 
was like a very little King indeed, I think. 

And now, for twelve long years, steadily pursuing his 
cjesigu of setting himself up and putting the people down. 



A CHILD'S H1ST0BY OF ENGLAND. 333 

the King called no Parliament ; but ruled without one. 
If twelve thousand volumes were written in his praise 
(as a good many have been) it would still remain a fact, 
impossible to be denied, that for twelve years King Charles 
the First reigned in England unlawfully and despotically, 
seized upon his subjects' goods and money at his pleasure, 
and punished according to his unbridled will all who vent- 1 
ured to oppose him. It is a fashion with some people 
to think that this King's career was cut short; but I 
must say myself that I think he ran a pretty long one. 

William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, was the 
King's right-hand man in the religious part of the putting 
down of the people's liberties. Laud, who was a sincere 
man, of large learning but small sense— for the two 
things sometimes go together in very different quantities 
• — though a Protestant, held opinions so near those of the 
Catholics, that the Pope wanted to make a Cardinal of 
him, if he would have accepted that favor. He looked 
upon vows, robes, lighted candles, images, and so forth, 
as amazingly important in religious ceremonies ; and he 
brought in an immensity of bowing and candle-snuffing. 
He also regarded archbishops and bishops as a sort of 
miraculous persons, and was inveterate in the last degree 
against any who thought otherwise. Accordingly, he 
offered up thanks to Heaven, and was in a state of much 
pious pleasure, when a Scotch clergyman named Leighton, 
was pilloried, whipped, branded in the cheek, and had one 
of his ears cut off and one of his nostrils slit, for calling 
bishops trumpery and the inventions of men. He orig- 
inated on a Sunday morning the prosecution of William 
Prynne, a barrister who was of similar opinions, and 
who was fined a thousand pounds; who was pilloried; 
who had his ears cut off on two occasions — one ear at a 
time — and who was imprisoned for life. He highly ap- 
proved of the punishment of Doctor Bastwick, a physi- 
cian ; who was also fined a thousand pounds ; and who 
afterwards had his ears cut off, and was imprisoned for 
life. These were gentle methods of persuasion, some will 
tell you : I think, they were rather calculated to be 
alarming to the people. 

In the money part of the putting down of the people's 
liberties, the King was equally gentle, as some will tell 
you: as I think, equally alarming. He levied those 



B 34 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND, 

duties of tonnage and poundage, and increased them as 
he thought fit. He granted monopolies to companies of 
merchants on their paying him for them, notwithstand- 
ing the great complaints that had, for years and years- 
been made on the subject of monopolies. He fined the 
people for disobeying proclamations issued by his Sow- 
ship in direct violation of law. He revived the detested 
Forest laws, and took private property to himself as his 
forest right. Above all, he determined to have what was 
called Ship Money ; that is to say, money for the support 
of the fleet — not only from the seaports, but from all the 
counties of England : having found out that, in some an- 
cient time or other, all the counties paid it. The grievance 
of this ship money being somewhat too strong, John 
Chambers, a citizen of London, refused to pay his part of it. 
For this the Lord Mayor ordered John Chambers to prison, 
and for that John Chambers brought a suit against the 
Lord Mayor. Lord Say, also, behaved like a real noble- 
man, and declared he would not pay. But, the sturdiest 
and best opponent of the ship money was John Hampden, 
a gentleman of Buckinghamshire, who had sat among 
the "vipers " in the House of Commons when there was 
such a thing, and who had been the bosom friend of Sir 
John Eliot. This case was tried before the twelve judges 
in the Court of Exchequer, and again the King's lawyers 
said it was impossible that ship money could be wrong, 
because the King could do no wrong, however hard he 
tried — and he really did try very hard during these twelve 
years. Seven of the judges said that was quite true, and 
Mr. Hampden was bound to pay : five of the judges said 
that was quite false, and Mr. Hampden was not bound 
to pay. So, the King triumphed (as he thought), by mak- 
ing Hampden the most popular man in England ; where 
matters were getting to that height now, that many 
honest Englishmen could not endure their country, 
and sailed away across the seas to found a colony in 
Massachusetts Bay in America. It is said that Hampden 
himself and his relation Oliver Cromwell were going 
with a company of such voyagers, and were actually on 
board ship, when they were stopped by a proclamation, 
prohibiting sea captains to carry out such passengers 
without the royal license. But O ! it would have been 
well for the King if he had let them go 1 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 335 

This was the state of England. If Laud had been a 
madman just broke loose, he could not have done more 
mischief than he did in Scotland. In his endeavors (in 
which he was seconded by the King, then in person in that 
part of his dominions) to force his own ideas of bishops, 
and his own religious forms and ceremonies, upon the 
Scotch, he roused that nation to a perfect frenzy. They 
formed a solemn league, which they called The Covenant, 
for the preservation of their own religious forms ; they 
rose in arms throughout the whole country ; they sum- 
moned all their men to prayers and sermons twice a day 
by beat of drum; they sang psalms, in which they com- 
pared their enemies to all the evil spirits that ever were 
heard of; and they solemnly vowed to smite them with 
the sword. At first the King tried force, then treaty, then 
a Scottish Parliament which did not answer at all. Then 
he tried the Earl of Strafford, formerly Sir Thomas 
Wentworth ; who, as Lord Wentwokth, had been govern- 
ing Ireland. He, too, had carried it with a very high 
hand there, though to the benefit and prosperity of that 
country. 

Strafford and Laud were for conquering the Scottish 
people by force of arms. Other lords who were taken into 
council, recommended that a Parliament should at last be 
called ; to which the King unwillingly consented. So, on 
the thirteenth of April, one thousand six hundred and 
forty, that then strange sight, a Parliament, was seen at 
Westminster. It is called the Short Parliament, for it 
lasted a very little while. While the members were all 
looking at one another, doubtful who would dare to 
speak, Mr. Pym arose and set forth all that the King had 
done unlawfully during the past twelve years, and what 
was the position to which England was reduced. This 
great example set, other members took courage and 
spoke the truth freely, though with great patience and 
moderation. The King, a little frightened, sent to say 
that if they would grant him a certain sum on certain 
terms, no more ship money should be raised. They de- 
bated the matter for two days ; and then, as they would 
not give him all he asked without promise or inquiry, he 
dissolved them. 

Bat they knew very well that he must have a Parlia- 
ment now; and he began to make tl^at oliscoverv too ? 



336 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

though rather late in the day. Wherefore, on the twenty, 
fourth of September, being then at York with an army 
collected against the Scottish people, but his own men 
sullen and discontented like the rest of the nation, the 
King told the great council of the Lords, whom he had 
called to meet him there, that he would summon another 
Parliament to assemble on the third of November. The 
soldiers of the Covenant had now forced their way into 
England and had taken possession of the northern coun- 
ties, where the coals are got. As it would never do to be 
without coals, and as the King's troops could make no head 
against the Covenanters so full of gloomy zeal, a truce was 
made, and a treaty with Scotland was taken into consid- 
eration. Meanwhile the northern counties paid the Cove- 
nanters to leave the coals alone, and keep quiet. 

We have now disposed of the Short Parliament. We 
have next to see what memorable things were done by 
the Long one. 

/Second Part. 

The Long Parliament assembled on the third of Novem- 
ber, one thousand six hundred and forty-one. That day- 
week the Earl of Strafford arrived from York, very sensi- 
ble that the spirited and determined men who formed that 
Parliament were no friends towards him, who had not 
only deserted the cause of the people, but who had on all 
occasions opposed himself to their liberties. The King 
told him, for his comfort, that the Parliament " should 
not hurt one hair of his head." But, on the very next 
day Mr. Pym, in the House of Commons, and with great 
solemnity, impeached the Earl of Strafford as a traitor. 
He was immediately taken into custody and fell from his 
proud height. 

It was the twenty-second of March before he was 
brought to trial in Westminster Hall ; where, although 
he was very ill and suffered great pain, he defended him- 
self with such ability and majesty, that it was doubtful 
whether he would not get the best of it. But on the 
thirteenth day of the trial, Pym produced in the House 
of Commons a copy of some notes of a council, found by 
young Sir Harry Vane in a red velvet cabinet belong- 
ing to his father (Secretary Vane, who sat at the council- 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 337 

table with the Earl), in which Strafford had distinctly 
told the King that he was free from all rules and obliga- 
tions of government, and might do with his people what- 
ever he liked; and in which he had added — "You have 
an army in Ireland that you may employ to reduce this 
kingdom to obedience." It was not clear whether by the 
words " this kingdom," he had really meant England or 
Scotland ; but the Parliament contended that he meant 
England, and this was treason. At the same sitting of 
the House of Commons it was resolved to bring in a bill 
of attainder declaring the treason to have been com- 
mitted : in preference to proceeding with the trial by im- 
peachment, which would have required the treason to be 
proved. 

So, a bill was brought in at once, was carried through 
the House of Commons by a large majority, and was sent 
up to the House of Lords. While it was still uncertain 
whether the House of Lords would pass it and the King 
consent to it, Pym disclosed to the House of Commons 
that the King and Queen had both been plotting with 
the officers of the army to bring up the soldiers, and con- 
trol the Parliament, and also to introduce two hundred 
soldiers into the Tower of London to effect the Earl's es- 
cape. The plotting with the army was revealed by one 
George Goring, the son of a lord of that name : a bad 
fellow who was one of the original plotters, and turned 
traitor. The King had actually given his warrant for 
the admission of the two hundred men into the Tower, 
and they would have got in too, but for the refusal of the 
governor — a sturdy Scotchman of the name of Balfour 
— to admit them. These matters being made public, 
great numbers of people began to riot outside the Houses 
of Parliament, and to cry out for the execution of the 
Earl of Strafford, as one of the King's chief instruments 
against them. The bill passed the House of Lords while 
the people were in this state of agitation, and was laid 
before the King for his assent, together with another bill, 
declaring: that the Parliament then assembled should not 
be dissolved or adjourned without their own consent. 
The King — not unwilling to save a faithful servant, 
though he had no great attachment for him — was in some 
doubt what to do; but he gave his consent to both bills, 
although he in his heart believed that the bill against the 



338 A CHlL&S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

» 
Earl of Strafford was unlawful and unjust. The Earl 
had written to him, telling him that he was willing to 
die for his sake. But he had not expected that his royal 
master would take him at his word quite so readily; for, 
when he heard his doom, he laid his hand upon his heart, 
and said, " Put not your trust in Princes ! " 

The King, who never could be straightforward and 
plain, through one single day or through one single sheet 
of paper, wrote a letter to the Lords, and sent it by the 
young Prince of Wales, entreating them to prevail with 
the Commons that " that unfortunate man should fulfil 
the natural course of his life in a close imprisonment." 
In a postscript to the very same letter, he added, " If he 
must die, it were charity to reprieve him till Saturday." 
If there had been any doubt of his fate, this weakness 
and meanness would have have settled it. The very 
next day, which was the twelfth of May, he was brought 
out to be beheaded on Tower Hill. 

Archbishop Laud, who had been so fond of having 
people's ears cropped off and their noses slit, was now 
confined in the Tower too ; and when the Earl went by 
his window to his death, he was there, at his request, to 
give him his blessing. They had been great friends in 
the King's cause, and the Earl had written to him in the 
days of their power that he thought it would be an ad- 
mirable thing to have Mr. Hampden publicly whipped 
for refusing to pay the ship money. However, those high 
and mighty doings were over now, and the Earl went his 
way to death with dignity and heroism. The governor 
wished him to get into a coach at the Tower gate, for fear 
the people should tear him to pieces ; but he said it was 
all one to him whether he died by the axe or by the 
people's hands. So, he walked, with a firm tread and a 
stately look, and sometimes pulled off his hat to them as 
he passed along. They were profoundly quiet. He made 
a speech on the scaffold from some notes he had prepared 
(the paper was found lying there after his head was 
struck off), and one blow of the axe killed him, in the 
forty-ninth year of his age. 

This bold and daring act, the Parliament accompanied 
by other famous measures, all originating (as even this 
did) in the King's having so grossly and so long abused 
his power. The name of Delinquents was applied to all 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND 339 

sheriffs and other officers who had been concerned in 
raising the ship money, or any other money, from the 
people, in an unlawful manner ; the Hampden judgment 
was reversed; the judges who had decided against 
Hampden were called upon to give large securities that 
they would take such consequences as Parliament might 
impose upon them; and one was arrested as he sat in 
High Court, and carried off to prison. Laud was im- 
peached ; the unfortunate victims whose ears had been 
cropped and whose noses had been slit, were brought out 
of prison in triumph ; and a bill was passed declaring 
that a Parliament should be called every third year, and 
that if the King and King's officers did not call it, the 
people should assemble of themselves and summon it, 
as of their own right and power. Great illuminations 
and rejoicings took place over all these things, and the 
country was wildly excited. That the Parliament took 
advantage of this excitement and stirred them up by every 
means, there is no doubt ; but you are always to remember 
those twelve long years, during which the King had tried 
so hard whether he really could do any wrong or not. 

All this time there was a great religious outcry against 
the right of the Bishops to sit in Parliament; to which 
the Scottish people particularly objected. The English 
were divided on this subject, and, partly on this account 
and partly because they had had foolish expectations 
that the Parliament would be able to take off nearly all 
the taxes, numbers of them sometimes wavered and in- 
clined towards the King. 

I believe myself, that if, at this or almost any other 
period of his life, the King could have been trusted by 
any man not out of his senses, he might have saved him- 
self and kept his throne. But, on the English army being 
disbanded, he plotted with the officers again, as he had 
done before, and established the fact beyond all doubt by 
putting his signature of approval to a petition against 
the Parliamentary leaders, which was drawn up by 
certain officers. When the Scottish army was disbanded, 
he went to Edinburgh in four days— which was going 
very fast at that time — to plot again, and so darkly too, 
that it is difficult to decide what his whole object was. 
Some suppose that he wanted to gain over the Scottish 
Parliament, as he did in fact gain over, by presents and 



346 A CHILD'S BISTORT OP ENGLAND. 

favors, many Scottish lords and men of power. Some 
think that he went to get proofs against the Parliament- 
ary leaders in England of their having treasonably in- 
vited the Scottish people to come and help them. With 
whatever object he went to Scotland, he did little good 
by going. At the instigation of the Earl of Montrose, 
a desperate man who was then in prison for plotting, he 
tried to kidnap three Scottish lords who escaped. A 
committee of the Parliament at home, who had followed 
to watch him, writing an account of this Incident, as it 
was called, to the Parliament, the Parliament made a 
fresh stir about it : were, or feigned to be, much alarmed 
for themselves ; and wrote to the Earl of Essex, the 
commander-in-chief, for a guard to protect them. 

It is not absolutely proved that the King plotted in 
Ireland besides, but it is very probable that he did, and 
that the Queen did, and that he had some wild hope of 
gaining the Irish people over to his side by favoring a 
rise among them. Whether or no, they did rise in a 
most brutal and savage rebellion ; in which, encouraged 
by their priests, they committed such atrocities upon 
numbers of the English, of both sexes and of all ages, as 
nobody could believe, but for their being related on oath 
by eye-witnesses. Whether one hundred thousand or 
two hundred thousand Protestants were murdered in 
this outbreak, is uncertain ; but, that it was as ruthless 
and barbarous an outbreak as ever was known among 
any savage people, is certain. 

The King came home from Scotland, determined to 
make a great struggle for his lost power. He believed that, 
through his presents and favors, Scotland would take no 
part against him ; and the Lord Mayor of London received 
him with such a magnificent dinner that he thought he 
must have become popular again in England. It would 
take a good many Lord Mayors, however, to make a 
people, and the King soon found himself mistaken. 

Not so soon, though, but that there was a great oppo- 
sition in the Parliament to a celebrated paper put forth 
by Pym and Hampden and the rest called " The Remon- 
strance," which set forth all the illegal acts that the 
King had ever done, but politely laid the blame of them 
on his bad advisers. Even when it was passed and pre- 
sented to him, the King still thought himself strong 



A CJHXLfrS HISTORY OF MGLANI). Ml 

enough to discharge Balfour from his command in the 
Tower, and to put in his place a man of bad character : to 
whom the Commons instantly objected and whom he 
was obliged to abandon. At this time, the old outcry 
about the Bishops became louder than ever, and the old 
Archbishop of York was so near being murdered as he 
went down to the House of Lords — being laid hold of by 
the mob and violently knocked about, in return for very 
foolishly scolding a shrill boy who was yelping out " No 
Bishops ! " — that he sent for all the Bishops who were in 
town, and proposed to them to sign a declaration that, as 
they could no longer without danger to their lives attend 
their duty in Parliament, they protested against the law- 
fulness of everything done in their absence. This they 
asked the King to send to the House of Lords, which he 
did. Then the House of Commons impeached the whole 
party of Bishops and sent them off to the Tower. 

Taking no warning from this ; but encouraged by there 
being a moderate party in the Parliament who objected 
to these strong measures, the King, on the third of Jan- 
uary, one thousand six hundred and forty-two, took the 
rashest step that ever was taken by mortal man. 

Of his own accord and without advice, he sent the At- 
torney-CTeneral to the House of Lords, to accuse of treason 
certain members of Parliament who as popular leaders 
were the most obnoxious to him ; Lord Kimbolton, Sir 
Arthur Haselrig, Denzil Hollis, John Pym (they used 
to call him King Pym he possessed such power and 
looked so big),_ John Hampden, and William Strode. 
The houses of those members he caused to be entered, 
and their papers to be sealed up. At the same time, he 
sent a messenger to the House of Commons demanding 
to have the five gentlemen who were members of that 
House immediately produced. To this the House replied 
that they should appear as soon as there was any legal 
charge against them, and immediately adjourned. 

Next day, the House of Commons send into the City to 
let the Lord Mayor know that their privileges are in- 
vaded by the King, and that there is no safety for anybody 
or anything. Then, when the five members are gone out 
of the way, down comes the King himself, with all his 
guard and from two to three hundred gentlemen and sol- 
diers, of whom the greater part were armed. These he 



342 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

leaves in the hall; and then, with his nephew at his side, 
goes into the House, takes off his hat, and walks up to 
the Speaker's chair. The Speaker leaves it, the King 
stands in front of it, looks about him steadily for a little 
while, and says he has come for those five members 
No one speaks, and then he calls John Pym by name. 
No one speaks, and then he calls Denzil Hollis by name. 
No one speaks, and then he asks the Speaker of the 
House where those five members are ? The Speaker, an- 
swering on his knee, nobly replies that he is the servant 
of that House, and that he has neither eyes to see, nor 
tongue to speak, anything but what the House commands 
him. Upon this, the King, beaten from that time ever- 
more, replies that he will seek them himself, for they 
have committed treason ; and goes out, with his hat 
in his hand, amid some audible murmurs from the 
members. 

No words can describe the hurry that arose out of doors 
when all this was known. The five members had gone for 
saftey to a house in Coleman Street, in the City, where 
they were guarded all night ; and indeed the whole city 
watched in arms like an army. At ten o'clock in the 
morning, the King already frightened at what he had 
done, came to the Guildhall, with only half a dozen lords, 
and made a speech to the people, hoping they would not 
shelter those whom he accused of treason. Next day, 
he issued a proclamation for the apprehension of the five 
members ; but the Parliament minded it so little that 
they made great arrangements for having them brought 
down to Westminster in great state, five days afterwards. 

The King was so alarmed now at his own imprudence, 
if not for his own safety, that he left his palace at White- 
hall, and went away with his Queen and children to 
Hampton Court. 

It was the eleventh of May, when the five members 
were carried in state and triumph to Westminster. 
They were taken by water. The river could not be seen 
for the boats on it; and the five members were hemmed 
in by barges full of men and great guns, ready to protect 
them, at any cost. Along the Strand a large body of the 
train-bands of London, under their commander Skippon, 
marched, to be ready to assist the little fleet. Beyond 
them, came a crowd who choked the streets, roaring in- 



A CHILD'S BISTORT OP ENGLAND. S43 

cessantly about the Bishops and the Papists, and crying 
out contemptuously as they passed Whitehall, "What 
has become of the King? " With this great noise outside 
the House of Commons, and with great silence within, 
Mr. Pym rose and informed the House of the great kind- 
ness with which they had been received in the City. 
Upon that, the House called the sheriffs in and thanked 
them, and requested the train-bands, under their com- 
mander Skippon, to guard the House of Commons every 
day. Then came four thousand men on horseback out of 
Buckinghamshire, offering their services as a guard too, 
and bearing a petition to the King, complaining of the 
injury that had been done to Mr. Hampden, who was 
their county man and much beloved and honored. 

When the King set off for Hampton Court, the gentle- 
men and soldiers who had been with him followed him out 
of town as far as Kingston-upon-Thames : next day, Lord 
Digby came to them from the King at Hampton Court, in 
his coach and six, to inform them that the King accepted 
their, jprotection. This, the Parliament said, was making 
war against the kingdom, and Lord Digby fled abroad. 
The Parliament then immediately applied themselves to 
getting hold of the military power of the country, well 
knowing that the King was already trying hard to use it 
against them, and that he had secretly sent the Earl of 
Newcastle to Hull, to secure a valuable magazine of arms 
and gunpowder that was there. In those times, every 
county had its own magazines of arms and powder, for 
its own train-bands or militia ; so, the Parliament 
brought in a bill claiming the right (which up to this 
time had belonged to the King) of appointing the Lord 
Lieutenants of counties, who commanded these train- 
bands ; also, of having all the forts, castles, and garrisons 
in the kingdom, put into the hands of such governors as 
they, the Parliament, could confide in. It also passed a 
law depriving the Bishops of their votes. The King gave 
his assent to that bill, but would not abandon the right 
of appointing the Lord Lieutenants, though he said he 
was willing to appoint such as might be suggested to him 
by the Parliament. When the Earl of Pembroke asked 
him whether he would not give way on that question for 
i time, he said, " By God ! not for one hour ! " and upon 
this he and the Parliament went to war. 



Ui A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

His young daughter was betrothed to the Prince of 
Orange. On pretence of taking her to the country of her 
future husband, the Queen was already got safely away 
to Holland, there to pawn the Crown jewels for money to 
raise an army on the King's side. The Lord Admiral 
being sick, the House of Commons now named the Earl 
of Warwick to hold his place for a year. The King 
named another gentleman ; the House of Commons took 
its own way, and the Earl of Warwick became Lord Ad- 
miral Without the King's consent. The Parliament sent 
orders down to Hull to have that magazine removed to 
London ; the King went down to Hull to take it himself. 
The citizens would not admit him into the town, and the 
governor would not admit him into the castle. The Par- 
liament resolved that whatever the two Houses passed, 
and the King would not consent to, should be called an 
Oedinance, and should be as much a law as if he did con- 
sent to it. The King protested against this, and gave 
notice that these ordinances were not to be obeyed. The 
King, attended by the majority of the House of Peers, 
and by many members of the House of Commons, es- 
tablished himself at York. The Chancellor went to him 
with the Great Seal, and the Parliament made a new 
Great Seal. The Queen sent over a ship full of arms and 
ammunition, and the King issued letters to borrow money 
at high interest. The Parliament raised twenty regi- 
ments of foot and seventy-five troops of horse; and the 
people willingly aided them with their money, plate, 
jewelry, and trinkets — the married women even with 
their wedding rings. Every member of Parliament, who 
could raise a troop or a regiment in his own part of the 
country, dressed it according to his taste and in his own 
colors, and commanded it. Foremost among them all, 
Olivee Ceomwell raised a troop of horse — thoroughly in 
earnest and thoroughly well armed — who were, perhaps, 
the best soldiers that ever were seen. 

In some of their proceedings, this famous Parliament 
passed the bounds of previous law and custom, yielded to 
and favored riotous assemblages of the people, and acted 
tyrannically in imprisoning some who differed from the 
popular leaders. But again, you are always to remember j 
that the twelve years during which the King had had his; 
own wilful way, had gone before ; and that nothing could I 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 345 

make the times what they might, could, would, or should 
have been, if those twelve years had never rolled away. 

Third Part. 

I shall not try to relate the particulars of the great civil 
war between King Charles the First and the Long Par- 
liament, which lasted nearly four years, and a full account 
of which would till many large books. It was a sad thing 
that Englishmen should once more be fighting against 
Englishmen on English ground ; but, it is some consola- 
tion to know that on both sides there was great humanity, 
forbearance, and honor. The soldiers of the Parliament 
were far more remarkable for these good qualities than 
; the soldiers of the King (many of whom fought for mere 
pay without much caring for the cause); but those of the 
nobility and gentry who were on the King's side were so 
brave, and so faithful to him, that their conduct cannot 
'but command our highest admiration. Among them were 
great numbers of Catholics, who took the royal side be- 
cause the Queen was so strongly of their persuasion. 

The King might have distinguished some of these gal- 
llant spirits, if he had been as generous a spirit himself, by 
{giving them the command of his army. Instead of that, 
|&owever, true to his old high notions of royalty, he in- 
trusted it to his two nephews, Prince Rupert and Prince 
Maurice, who were of royal blood, and came over from 
kbroad to help him. It might have been better for him 
I if they had stayed away ; since Prince Rupert was an im- 
loetuous hot-headed fellow, whose only idea was to dash 
nto battle at all times and seasons, and lay about him. 
i The general-in-chief of the Parliamentary army was the 
i&irl of Essex, a gentleman of honor and an excellent 
Uldier. A little while before the war broke out, there 
I md been some rioting at Westminster between certain 
hfficious law students and noisy soldiers, and the shop- 
keepers and their apprentices, and the general people in 
he streets. At that time the King's friends called the 
irowd, Roundheads, because the apprentices wore short 
iair;the crowd, in return, called their opponents Cav- 
aliers, meaning that they were a blustering set, who pre- 
ended to be very military. These two words now began 
o be used to distinguish the two sides in the civil war. 



846 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

The Royalists also called the Parliamentary men Rebels 
and Rogues, while the Parliamentary men called them 
Malign ants, and spoke of themselves as the Godly, the 
Honest, and so forth. 

The war broke out at Portsmouth, where that double 
traitor Goring had again gone over to the King and was 
besieged by the Parliamentary troops. Upon this, the 
King proclaimed the Earl of Essex and the officers serving 
under him, traitors, and called upon his loyal subjects to 
meet him in arms at Nottingham on the twenty-fifth of 
August. But his loyal subjects came about him in scanty 
numbers, and it was a windy gloomy day, and the Royal 
Standard got blown down, and the whole affair was very 
melancholy. The chief engagements after this took place 
in the vale of the Red Horse near Banbury, at Brentford, 
at Devizes, at Chalgrave Field (where Mr. Hampden was 
so sorely wounded while fighting at the head of his men, 
that he died within a week), at Newbury (in which battle 
Lord Falkland, one of the best noblemen on the King's 
side, was killed), at Leicester, at Naseby, at Winchester, 
at Marston Moor near York, at Newcastle, and in many 
other parts of England and Scotland. These battles were 
attended with various successes. At one time, the King 
was victorious ; at another time, the Parliament. But 
almost all the great and busy towns were against the 
King ; and when it was considered necessary to fortify 
London, all ranks of people, from laboring men and 
women, up to lords and ladies, worked hard together with 
heartiness and good- will. The most distinguished leaders 
on the Parliamentary side were Hampden, Sir Thomas 
Fairfax, and, above all, Oliver Cromwell, and his son- 
in-law Ireton. 

During the whole of this war, the people, to whom it 
was very expensive and irksome, and to whom it was 
made the more distressing by almost every family being 
divided — some of its members attaching themselves to 
one side and some to the other — were over and over again 
most anxious for peace. So were some of the best men 
in each cause. Accordingly, treaties of peace were dis- 
cussed between commissioners from the Parliament and 
the King ; at York, at Oxford (where the King held a 
little Parliament of his own), and at TJxbridge. But they 
came to nothing. Jn all these negotiations, and in all hi§ 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 347 

difficulties, the King showed himself at his best. He 
was courageous, cool, self-possessed and clever ; but, the 
old taint of his character was always in him, and he was 
never for one single moment to be trusted. Lord Claren- 
don, tlxe historian, one of his highest admirers, supposes 
that he had unhappily promised the Queen never to make 
peace without her consent, and that this must often be 
taken as his excuse. He never kept his word from night 
to morning. He signed a cessation of hostilities with 
the blood-stained Irish rebels for a sum of money, and 
invited the Irish regiments over, to help him against the 
Parliament. In the battle of Naseby, his cabinet was 
seized and was found to contain a correspondence with 
the Queen, in which he expressly told her that he had 
deceived the Parliament — a mongrel Parliament he called 
it now, as an improvement on his old term of vipers— in 
pretending to recognize it and to treat with it ; and from 
which it further appeared that he had long been in secret 
treaty with the Duke of Lorraine for a foreign army of 
ten thousand men. Disappointed in this, he sent a most 
devoted friend of his, the Earl of Glamorgan, to Ireland, 
to conclude a secret treaty with the Catholic powers, to 
send him an Irish army of ten thousand men ; in return 
for which he was to bestow great favors on the Catholic 
religion. And, when this treaty was discovered in the 
carriage of a fighting Irish Archbishop who was killed in 
one of the many skirmishes of those days, he basely 
denied and deserted his attached friend, the Earl, on his 
being charged with high treason ; and — even worse than 
this — had left blanks in the secret instructions he gave 
him with his own kingly hand, expressly that he might 
thus save himself. 

At last, on the twenty-seventh day of April, one thou- 
sand six hundred and forty-six, the King found himself 
in the city of Oxford, so surrounded by the Parliament- 
ary army who were closing in upon him on all sides 
that he felt that if he would escape he must delay no 
longer. So, that night, having altered the cut of his hair 
and beard, he was dressed up as a servant and put upon 
a horse with a cloak strapped behind him, and rode out 
of the town behind one of his own faithful followers, 
with a clergyman of that country who knew the road 
well, for a guide, He rode towards London as far m 



348 A CHILD'S HISTOBY OF ENGLAND. 

Harrow, and then altered his plans and resolved, it would 
seem, to go to the Scottish camp. The Scottish men had 
been invited over to help the Parliamentary army, and 
had a large force then in England. The King was so 
desperately intriguing in everything he did, that it is 
doubtful what he exactly meant by this step. He took it 
anyhow, and delivered himself up to the Earl op Leven, 
the Scottish general-in-chief, who treated him as an honor- 
able prisoner. Negotiations between the Parliament on 
the one hand and the Scottish authorities on the other, as 
to what should be done with him, lasted until the follow- 
ing February. Then, when the King had refused to the 
Parliament the concession of that old militia point for 
twenty years, and had refused to Scotland the recogni- 
tion of its Solemn League and Covenant, Scotland got a 
handsome sum for its army and its help, and the King 
into the bargain. He was taken by certain Parliament- 
ary commissioners appointed to receive him, to one of 
his own houses, called Holmby House, near Althorpe, in 
Northamptonshire. 

While the Civil War was still in progress, John Pym 
died, and was buried with great honor in Westminster 
Abbey — not with greater honor than he deserved, for the 
liberties of Englishmen owe a mighty debt to Pym and 
Hampden. The war was but newly over when the Earl 
of Essex died, of an illness brought on by his having 
overheated himself in a stag hunt in Windsor Forest. 
He, too. was, buried in Westminster Abbey, with great 
state. I wish it were not necessary to acid that Arch- 
bishop Laud died upon the scaffold when the war was 
not yet done. His trial lasted in all nearly a year, and, 
it being doubtful even then whether the charges brought 
against him amounted to treason, the odious old con- 
trivance of the worst kings was resorted to, and a bill of 
attainder was brought in against him. He was a violently 
prejudiced and mischievous person ; had had strong ear- 
cropping and nose-slitting propensities, as you know; 
and had done a world of harm. But he died peaceably 
and like a brave old man. 

Fourth Part. 

When the Parliament had got the King into their j 
hands, they became very anxious to get rid of their army, 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND, 849 

in which Oliver Cromwell had begun to acquire great 
power ; not only because of his courage and high abilities, 
but because he professed to be very sincere in the Scot- 
tish sort of Puritan religion that was then exceedingly 
popular among the soldiers. They were as much opposed 
to the Bishops as to the Pope himself; and the very 
privates, drummers, and trumpeters, had such an incon- 
venient habit of starting up and preaching long-winded 
discourses, that I would not have belonged to that army 
on any account. 

So, the Parliament, being far from sure but that the 
army might begin to preach and fight against them now 
it had nothing else to do, proposed to disband the greater 
part of it, to send another part to serve in Ireland against 
the rebels, and to keep only a small force in England. 
But, the army would not consent to be broken up, except 
upon its own conditions; and, when the Parliament 
showed an intention of compelling it, it acted for itself 
in an unexpected manner. A certain cornet, of the name 
of Joice arrived at Ilolmby House one night, attended by 
four hundred horsemen, went into the Kings room with 
his hat in one hand and a pistol in the other, and told the 
King that he had come to take him away. The King 
was willing enough to go, and only stipulated that he 
should be publicly required to do so next morning. Next 
morning, accordingly, he appeared on the top of the steps 
of the house, and asked Cornet Joice before his men and 
the guard set there by the Parliament, what authority he 
had for taking him away? To this Cornet Joice replied, 
"The authority of the army." — "Have you a written 
commission ?" said the King. Joice, pointing to his four 
hundred men on horseback, replied, " That is my com- 
mission." — " Well," said the King, smiling, as if he were 
pleased, " I never before read such a commission ; but it 
is written in fair and legible characters. This is a com- 
pany of as lmndsome proper gentlemen as I have seen a 
long while." He was asked where he would like to live, 
and he said at Newmarket. So, to Newmarket he and 
Cornet Joice and the four hundred horsemen rode ; the 
King remarking, in the same smiling way, that he could 
ride as far at a spell as Cornet Joice, or any man there. 

The King quite believed, I think, that the army were 
his friends. He said as much to Fairfax when that 



350 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

general, Oliver Cromwell, and Ireton, went to persuade 
him to return to the custody of the Parliament. He per- 
ferred to remain as he was, and resolved to remain as he 
was. An i when the army moved nearer and nearer Lon- 
don to frighten the Parliament into yielding to their 
demands they took the King with them. It was a de- 
plorable thing that England should be at the mercy of a 
great body of soldiers with arms in their hands ; but the 
King certainly favored them at this important time of 
his life, as compared with the more lawful power' that 
tried to control him. It must be added, however, that 
they treated hi in, as yet, more respectfully and kindly 
than the Parliament had done. They allowed him to be 
attended by his own servants, to be splendidly entertained 
at various houses, and to see his children — at Cavesham 
House, near Reading — for two days. Whereas, the Par- 
liament had been rather hard with him, and had only 
allowed him to ride out and play at bowls. 

It is much to be believed that if the King could have 
been trusted, even at this time, he might have been saved. 
Even Oliver Cromwell expressly said that he did believe 
that no man could enjoy his possessions in peace, unless 
the King had his rights. He was not unfriendly towards 
the King; he had been present when he received his 
children, and had been much affected by the pitiable 
nature of the scene ; he saw the King often ; he frequently 
walked and talked with him in the long galleries and 
pleasant gardens of the Palace at Hampton Court, whither 
he was now removed ; and in all this risked something of 
his influence with the army. But, the King was in secret 
hopes of help from the Scottish people; and the moment 
he was encouraged to join them he began to be cool to his 
new friends, the army, and to tell the officers that they 
could not possibly do without him. At the very time, 
too, when he was promising to make Cromwell and Ireton 
noblemen, if they would help him up to hi§ old height, 
he was writing to the Queen that he meant to hang them. 
They both afterwards declared that they had been 
privately informed that such a letter would be found, on 
a certain evening, sewn up in a saddle which would be 
taken to the Blue Boar in Holborn to be sent to Dover; 
and that they went there, disguised as common soldiers, 
and sat drinking in the inn-yard until a man came with 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 351 

the saddle, which they ripped up with their knives, and 
therein found the letter. I see little reason to doubt the 
story. It is certain that Oliver Cromwell told one of the 
King's most faithful followers that the King could not be 
trusted, and that he would not be answerable if anything 
amiss were to happen to him. Still, even after that, he 
kept a promise he had made to the King, by letting him 
know that there was a plot with a certain portion of the 
army to seize him. I believe that, in fact, he sincerely 
wanted the King to escape abroad, and so to be got rid 
of without more trouble or danger. That Oliver himself 
had work enough with the army is pretty plain ; for some 
of the troops were so mutinous against him, and against 
those who acted with him at this time, that he found it 
necessary to have one man shot at the head of his regi- 
ment to overawe the rest. 

The King, when he received Oliver's warning, made his 
escape from Hampton Court ; after some indecision and 
uncertainty, he went to Carisbrooke Castle in the Isle of 
Wight. At first, he was pretty free there ; but, even 
there, he carried on a pretended treaty with the Parlia- 
ment, while he was really treating with commissioners 
from Scotland to send an army into England to take his 
part. When he broke off this treaty with the Parliament 
(having settled with Scotland) and was treated as a 
prisoner," his treatment was not changed too soon, for he 
had plotted to escape that very night to a ship sent by 
the Queen, which was lying off the Island. 

He was doomed to be disappointed in his hopes from 
Scotland. The agreement he had made with the Scottish 
Commissioners was not favorable enough to the religion 
of that country to please the Scottish clergy; and they 
preached against it. The consequence was, that the 
army raised in Scotland and sent over, was too small to 
do much ; and that, although it was helped by a rising 
of the Royalists in England and by good soldiers from 
Ireland, itcould make no head against the Parliamentary 
army under such men as Cromwell and Fairfax. The 
King's eldest son, the Prince of Wales, came over from 
Holland with nineteen ships (a part of the English fleet 
having gone over to him) to help his father ; but nothing 
came of his voyage, and he was fain to return, The most 
remarkable event of this second civil war was the cruel 



352 A CHILD'S EISTOBT OF ENGLAND. 

execution by the Parliamentary General, of Sir Charles 
Lucas and Sir George Lisle, two gallant Royalist 
generals, who had bravely defended Colchester under 
every disadvantage of famine and distress for nearly 
three months. YVhen Sir Charles Lucas was shot, Sir 
George Lisle kissed his body, and said to the soldiers who 
were to shoot him, "Come nearer, and make sure of me." 
■ — " I warrant you, Sir George," said one of the soldiers, 
"we shall hit you." — "Ay," he returned with a smile, 
" but I have been nearer to you, my friends, many a time, 
and you have missed me." 

The Parliament, after being fearfully bullied by the 
army— who demanded to have seven members whom they 
disliked given up to them — had voted that they would 
have nothing more to do with the King. On the conclu- 
sion, however, of this second civil war (which did not last 
more than six months), they appointed commissioners to 
treat with him. The King, then so far released again as 
to be allowed to live in a private house at Newport in the 
Isle of Wight, managed his own part of the negotiation 
witli a sense that was admired by all who saw him, and 
gave up, in the end, all that was asked of him — even 
yielding (which he had steadily refused, so far) to the 
temporary abolition of the bishops, and the transfer of 
their Church land to the Crown. Still with his old fatal 
vice upon him, when his best friends joined the commis- 
sioners in beseeching him to yield all those points as the 
only means of saving himself from the army, he was 
plotting to escape from the island ; he was holding corre- 
spondence with his friends and the Catholics in Ireland, 
though declaring that he was not; and he was writing, 
with his own hand, that in what he yielded he meant 
nothing but to get time to escape. 

Matters were at this pass when the army, resolved to 
defy the Parliament, marched up to London. The Par- 
liament, not afraid of them now, and boldly led by Hollis, 
voted that the King's concessions were sufficient ground 
for settling the peace of the kingdom. Upon that, 
Colonel Rich and Colonel Pride went down to the 
House of Commons with a regiment of horse soldiers and 
a regiment of foot; and Colonel Pride, standing in the 
lobby with a list of the members who were obnoxious to 
the army in his hand, had them pointed out to him as 



A CH1L&S BISTORT OF ENGLAND. S53 

they came through, and took them all into custody. This 
proceeding was afterwards called by the people, for a 
joke, Pride's Purge. Cromwell was in the North, at the 
head of his men, at the time, but when he came home* 
approved of what had been done. 

What with imprisoning some members and causing 
others to stay away, the army had now reduced the House 
of Commons to some fifty or so. These soon voted that 
it was treason in the king to make war against his Parlia- 
ment and his people, and sent an ordinance Up to the 
House of Lords for the King's being tried as a traitor. 
The House of Lords, then sixteen in number, to a man 
rejected it. Thereupon, the Commons made an ordinance 
of their own, that they were the supreme government of 
the country, and would bring the King to trial. 

The King had been taken for security to a place called 
Hurst Castle : a lonely house on a rock in the sea, con- 
nected with the coast of Hampshire by a rough road, two 
miles long at low water. Thence, he was ordered to be 
removed to Windsor; thence, after being but rudely used 
there, and having none but soldiers to wait upon him at 
table, he was brought up to Saint James's Palace in 
London, and told that his trial was appointed for next 
day. 

On Saturday, the twentieth of January, one thousand 
six hundred and forty-nine, this memorable trial began. 
The House of Commons had settled that one hundred 
and thirty-five persons should form the Court, and these 
were taken from the House itself, from among the officers 
of the army, and from among the lawyers and citizens. 
John Bradshaw, sergeant-at-law, was appointed presi- 
dent. The place was Westminster Hall. At the upper 
end in a red velvet chair, sat the president, with his hat 
(lined with plates of iron for his protection) on his head. 
The rest of the Court sat on side benches, also wearing 
their hats. The King's seat was covered with velvet, 
like that of the president, and was opposite to it. He 
was brought from St. James's to Whitehall, and from 
Whitehall he came by water to his trial. 

When he came in, lie looked round very steadily on the 
Court, and on the great number of spectators, and then 
sat down : presently he got up and looked round again. 
On the indictment " against Charles Stuart, for high 



854 A CHILD'S HIStuBY OF ENGLAND. 

treason," being read, he smiled several times, and he 
denied the authority of the Court, saying that there could 
be no parliament without a House of Lords, and that he 
saw no House of Lords there. Also, that the King ought 
to be there, and that he saw no King in the King's right 
place. Bradshaw replied, that the Court was satisfied 
with its authority, and that its authority was God's au-, 
thority and the kingdom's. He then adjourned the Court 
to the following Monday. On that day, the trial was re- 
sumed, and went on all the week. When the Saturday 
came, as the King passed forward to his place in the Hall, 
3ome soldiers and others cried for " justice ! " and ex- 
ecution on him. That day, too, Bradshaw, like an angry 
jSultan, wore a red robe, instead of the black robe he had 
worn before. The king was sentenced to death that day. 
As he went out, one solitary soldier said, "God ]»lessyou, 
Sir I " For this, his officer struck him. The King said 
he thought the punishment exceeded the offence. The 
silver head of his walking-stick had fallen off while he 
leaned upon it, at one time of the trial. The accident 
seemed to disturb him, as if he thought it ominous of the 
falling of his own head ; and he admitted as much, now 
it was all over. 

Being taKen back to Whitehall, he sent to the House 
of Commons, saying that as the time of his execution 
might be nigh, he wished he might be allowed to see his 
darling children. It was granted. On the Monday he 
was taken bac& to St. James's ; and his two children then 
in England, the Princess Elizabeth thirteen years old, 
and the Duke of Gloucester nine years old, were brought 
to take leave of him, from Sion House, near Brentford. 
It was a sad and touching scene, when he kissed and 
fondled those poor children, and made a little present of 
two diamond seals to the Princess, and gave them tender 
messages to their mother (who little deserved them, for 
she had a lover of her own whom she married soon after- 
wards), and told them that he died "for the laws and' 
liberties of the land." I am bound to say that I don't 
think he did, but I dare say he believed so. 

There were ambassadors from Holland that day, to 
intercede for the unhappy King, whom you and I both 
wish the Parliament had spared ; but they got no answer. 
The Scottish Commissioners interceded too ; so did the 



A CHILD'S BISTOBY OF ENGLAND. 355 

Prince of Wales, by a letter in which he offered as the 
next heir to the throne, to accept any conditions from the 
Parliament; so did the Queen, by letter likewise. Not- 
withstanding all, the warrant for his execution was this 
day signed. There is a story that as Oliver Cromwell 
went to the table with the pen in his hand to put his 
signature to it, he drew his pen across the face of one of 
the commissioners who was standing near, and marked 
it with ink. That commissioner had not signed his own 
name yet, and the story adds that when he came to do it 
he marked Cromwell's face with ink in the same way. 

The king slept well, untroubled by the knowledge that 
it was his last night on earth, and rose on the thirtieth 
of January, two hours before day, and dressed himself 
carefully. He put on tw T o shirts lest he should tremble 
with the cold, and had his hair very carefully combed. 
The warrant had been directed to three officers of the 
army, Colonel Hacker, Colonel Hunks, and Colonel 
Phayer. At ten o'clock, the first of these came to the 
door and said it was time to go to Whitehall. The King, 
who had always been a quick walker, walked at his usual 
speed through the Park, and called out to the guard with 
his accustomed voice of command, "March on apace!" 
When he came to Whitehall, he was taken to his own 
bedroom, where a breakfast was set forth. As he had 
taken the Sacrament, he would eat nothing more ; but, at 
about the time when the church bells struck twelve at 
noon (for he had to wait, through the scaffold not being 
ready), he took the advice of the good Bishop J?txon who 
was with him, and ate a little bread and drank a glass of 
claret. Soon after he had taken this refreshment, Colonel 
Hacker came to the chamber with the warrant in his 
hand, and called for Charles Stuart. 

And then, through the long gallery of Whitehall Palace, 
which he had often seen light and gay and merry and 
crowded, in very different times, the fallen King passed 
along, until he came to the centre window of the Ban* 
queting House, through which he emerged upon the 
scaffold, which was hung with black. He looked at the 
two executioners, who were dressed in black and masked ; 
he looked at the troops of soldiers on horseback and on 
foot, and all looked up at him in silence; he Hooked afc 
the vast array of spectators, filling up the view bpf^d; 



§56 -A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

and turning all their faces upon him ; he looked at his 
old palace of St. James's ; and he looked at the block. 
He seemed a little troubled to find that it was so low, and 
asked, "if there were no place higher?" Then, to those 
upon the scaffold, he said " that it was the Parliament 
who had begun the war, and not he; but he hoped they 
might be guiltless too, as ill instruments had gone between 
them. In one respect," he said, " he suffered justly ; and 
that was because he had permitted an unjust sentence to 
be executed on another." In this he referred to the Earl 
of Strafford. 

He was not at all afraid to die ; but he was anxious to 
die easily. When some one touched the axe while he 
was speaking, he broke off and called out, "Take heed of 
the axe! take heed of the axe!" He also said to Colonel 
Hacker, "Take care that they do not put me to pain." 
He told the executioner, " I shall say but very short 
prayers, and then thrust out my hands " — as the sign to 
strike. 

He put his hair up under a white satin cap which the 
bishop had carried, and said, " I have a good cause and a 
gracious God on my side." The bishop told him that he 
had but one stage more to travel in this weary world, and 
that, though it was a turbulent and troublesome stage, it 
was a short one, and would carry him a great way— all 
the way from earth to heaven. The King's last word, as 
he gave his cloak and the George — the decoration from 
his breast — to the bishop, was, " Remember ! " He then 
kneeled down, laid his head on the block, spread out his 
hands, and was instantly killed. One universal groan 
broke from the crowd ; and the soldiers, who had sat on 
their horses and stood in their ranks immovable as statues, 
were of a sudden all in motion, clearing the streets. 

Thus;, in the forty-ninth year of his age, falling at the 
same time of his career as Strafford had fallen in his, 
perished Charles the First. With all my sorrow for him, 
I cannot agree with him that he died " the martyr of the 
people ; " for the people had been martyrs to him, aiid to 
his ideas of a King's rights, long before. Indeed, I am 
afraid that he was but a bad judge of martyrs ; for he had 
called that infamous Duke of Buckingham "the Martyr 
of his Sovereign." 



A CHILD'S BISTORT OF &NGLANB* 857 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 

ENGLAND UNDER OLIVER CROMWELL. 

First Part. 

Before sunset on the memorable day on which King 
Charles the First was executed, the House of Commons 
passed an act declaring it treason in any one to proclaim 
the Prince of Wales— or anybody else — King of England. 
Soon afterwards, it declared that the House of Lords was 
useless and dangerous, and ought to be abolished ; and 
directed that the late King's statue should be taken down 
from the Royal Exchange in the City and other public 
places. Having laid hold of some famous Royalists who 
had escaped from prison, and having beheaded the Duke 
of Hamilton, Lord Holland, and Lord Capel, in Palace 
Yard (all of whom died very courageously), they then 
appointed a Council of State to govern the country. It 
consisted of forty-one members, of whom five were peers. 
Bradshaw was made president. The House of Commons 
also re-admitted members who had opposed the King's 
death, and made up its numbers to about a hundred and 
fifty. 

But, it still had an army of more than forty thousand 
men to deal with, and a very hard task it was to manage 
them. " Before the King's execution, the army had ap- 
pointed some of its officers to remonstrate between them 
and the Parliament ; and now the common soldiers began 
to take that office upon themselves. The regiments under 
orders for Ireland, mutinied ; one troop of horse in the 
city of London seized their own fl;ig, and refused to obey 
orders. For this, the ringleader was shot : which did not 
mend the matter, for, both his comrades and the people 
made a public funeral for him, and accompanied the body 
to the grave with sound of trumpets and with a gloomy 
procession of persons carrying bundles of rosemary steeped 
in blood. Oliver was the only man to deal with such dif- 
ficulties as these, and he soon cut them short by bursting 



358 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

at midnight into the town of Burford, near Salisbury, 
where the mutineers were sheltered, taking four hundred 
of them prisoners, and shooting a number of them by 
sentence of court-martial. The soldiers soon found, as all 
men did, that Oliver was not a man to be trifled with. 
And there was an end of the mutiny. 

The Scottish Parliament did not know Oliver yet; so, 
on hearing of the King's execution, it proclaimed th 
Prince of Wales King Charles the Second, on condition 
of his respecting the Solemn League and Covenant. 
Charles was abroad at that time, and so was Montrose, 
from whose help he had hopes enough to keep him hold- 
ing on and off with commissioners from Scotland, just as 
his father might have done. These hopes were soon at an 
end; for, Montrose, having raised a few hundred exiles in 
Germany, and landed with them in Scotland, found that 
the people there, instead of joining him, deserted the 
country at his approach. He was soon taken prisoner and 
carried to Edinburgh. There he was received with every 
possible insult, and carried to prison in a cart, his officers 
going two and two before him. He was sentenced by the 
Parliament to be hanged on a gallows thirty feet high, t 
have his head set on a spike in Edinburgh, and his limb 
distributed in other places, according to the old barbarous 
manner. He said he had always acted under the Royal 
orders, and only wished, he had limbs enough to be dis- 
tributed through Christendom, that it might be the more 
widely known how loyal he had been. He went to the 
scaffold in a bright and brilliant dress, and made a bold 
end at thirty-eight years of age. The breath was scarcely 
out of his body when Charles abandoned his memory, and_ 
denied that he had ever given him orders to rise in his 
behalf. O the family failing was strong in that Charles 
then! 

Oliver had been appointed by the Parliament to com- 
mand the army in Ireland, where he took a terrible 
vengeance for the sanguinary rebellion, and made tre- 
mendous havoc, particularly in the siege of Drogheda, 
where no quarter was given, and where lie found at least 
a thousand of the inhabitants shut up together m the 
great church : every one of whom was killed by his 
soldiers, usually known as Olivers Ironsides. There 
tf^re numbers of friars and priests among them, and 



! 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 359 

Oliver gruffly wrote home in his despatch that these were 
"knocked on the head" like the rest. 

But, Charles having got over to Scotland, where the 
men of the Solemn League and Covenant led him a pro- 
digiously dull life and made him very weary with long 
sermons and grim Sundays, the Parliament called the 
redoubtable Oliver home to knock the Scottish men on 
the head for setting up that Prince. Oliver left his son- 
in-law, Ireton, as general in Ireland in his stead (he died 
there afterwards), and he imitated the example of his 
father-in-law with such good-will that he brought the 
country to subjection, and laid it at the feet of the Par- 
liament. In the end, they passed an act for the settle- 
ment of Ireland, generally pardoning all the common 
people, but exempting from this grace such of the 
wealthier sort as had been concerned in the rebellion, or 
in any killing of Protestants, or who refused to lay down 
their arms. Great numbers of Irish were got out of the 
country to serve under Catholic powers abroad, and a 
quantity of land was declared to have been forfeited by 
past offences, and was given to people who had lent 
money to the Parliament early in the war. These were 
sweeping measures; but, if Oliver Cromwell had had his 
own way fully, and had stayed in Ireland, he would have 
done more yet. 

However, as I have said, the Parliament wanted Oliver 
for Scotland ; so, home Oliver came, and was made Com- 
mander of all the Forces of the Commonwealth of Eng- 
land, and in three days away he went with sixteen thou- 
sand soldiers to fight the Scottish men. Now, the Scot- 
tish men, being then, as you will generally find them now 
— mighty cautious, reflected that the troops they had, 
were not used to war like the Ironsides, and would be 
beaten in an open fight. Therefore they said, •' If we lie 
quiet in our trenches in Edinburgh here, and if all the 
farmers come into the town and desert the country, the 
Ironsides will be driven out by iron hunger and be forced 
to go away." This was, no doubt, the wisest plan; but 
as the Scottish clergy would interfere with what they 
knew nothing about, and would perpetually preach long 
sermons exhorting the soldiers to come out and fight, the 
soldiers got it in their heads that they absolutely must 
come out and fight. Accordingly, in an evil hour for 



360 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

themselves, they came out of their safe position. Olive* 
fell upon them instantly, and killed three thousand, and 
took ten thousand prisoners. 

To gratify the Scottish Parliament, and preserve their 
favor, Charles had signed a declaration they laid before 
him, reproaching the memory of his father and mother, 
and representing himself as a most religious Prince, to 
whom the Solemn League and Covenant was as dear as life. 
He meant no sort of truth in this, and soon afterwards 
galloped away on horseback to join some tiresome High- 
land friends, who were always flourishing dirks and broad- 
swords. He was overtaken and induced to return ; but 
this attempt, which was called "The start," did him just 
so much service, that they did not preach quite such long 
sermons at him afterwards as they had done before. 

On the first of January, one thousand six hundred and 
fifty-one, the Scottish people crowned him at Scone. He 
immediately took the chief command of an army of twenty 
thousand men, and marched to Stirling. His hopes were 
heightened, I dare say, by the redoubtable Oliver being 
ill of an ague ; but Oliver scrambled out of bed in no time, 
and went to work with such energy that he got behind 
the Royalist army and cut it off from all communication 
with Scotland. There was nothing for it then, but to go 
on to England ; so it went on as far as Worcester, where 
the mayor and some of the gentry proclaimed King 
Charles the Second straightway. His proclamation, how- 
ever, was of little use to him, for very few Royalists ap- 
peared ; and, on the very same day, two people were pub- 
licly beheaded on Tower Hill for espousing his cause. Up 
came Oliver to Worcester too, at double quick speed, and 
he and his Ironsides so laid about them in the great battle 
which was fought there, that they completely beat the 
Scottish men, and destroyed the Royalist army; though 
the Scottish men fought so gallantly that it took five 
hours to do. 

The escape of Charles after this battle of Worcester did 
him good service long afterwards, for it induced many of 
the generous English people to take a romantic interest 
in him, and to think much better of him than he ever 
deserved. He fled in the night, with not more than sixty 
followers, to the house of a Catholic lady in Stafford shire. 
There, for his greater safety, the whole sixty left him, 

,. ... ■■ 



A CHILD'S HISTOBY OF ENGLAND, 861 

He cropped his hair, stained his face and hands brown as 
if they were sunburnt, pnt on the clothes of a laboring 
countryman, and went out in the morning with his axe 
in his hand, accompanied by four wood-cutters who were 
brothers, and another man who was their brother-in-law. 
These good fellows made a bed for him under a tree, as 
the weather was very bad; and the wife of one of them 
brought him food to eat; and the old mother of the four 
brothers came and fell down on her knees before him in 
the wood, and thanked God that her sons were engaged in 
saving his life. At night he came out of the forest and 
went on to another house which was near the river Severn, 
with the intention of passing into Wales ; but the place 
swarmed with soldiers, and the bridges were guarded, and 
all the boats were made fast. So, after lying in a hayloft 
covered over with hay, for some time, he came out of this 
place, attended by Colonel Careless a Catholic gentle- 
man who had met him there, and with whom he lay hid, 
all next day, up in the shady branches of a fine old oak. 
It was 4ucky for the King that it was September-time, 
and that the leaves had not begun to fall, since he and 
the Colonel, perched up in this tree, could catch glimpses 
of the soldiers riding about below, and could hear the 
crash in the wood as they went about beating the boughs. 
After this, he walked and walked until his feet were all 
blistered; and, having been concealed all one day in a 
house which was searched by the troopers while he was 
there, went with Lord Wilmot, another of his good friends, 
to a place called Bentley, where one Miss Lane, a Prot- 
estant lady, had obtained a pass to be allowed to ride 
through the guards to see a relation of hers near Bristol. 
Disguised as a servant, he rode in the saddle before this 
young lad y to the house of Sir John Winter, while Lord 
Wilmot rode there boldly, like a plain country gentleman, 
with dogs at his heels. It happened that Sir John Win- 
ter's butler had been servant in Richmond Pahice, and 
knew Charles the moment he set eyes upon him ; but, the 
butler was faithful and kept the secret. As no ship could 
be found to carry him abroad, it was planned that he 
should go — still travelling with Miss Lane as her servant 
— to another house, at Trent near Sherborne in Dorsetshire; 
and then Miss Lane and her cousin, Mr. Lascelles, who 
bad gone on horseback beside her all the way, went home* 



362 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

I hope Miss Lane was going to marry that cousin, for I 
am sure she must have been a brave kind girl. If I had 
been that cousin, I should certainly have loved Miss Lane. 

When Charles, lonely for the loss of Miss Lane, was 
safe at Trent, a ship was hired at Lyme, the master of 
which engaged to take two gentlemen to France. In the 
evening of the same day, the King — now riding as serv- 
ant before another young lady — set off for a public-house 
at a place called Charmouth, where the captain of the 
vessel was to take him on board. But, the captain's wife, 
being afraid of her husband's getting into trouble, locked 
him up and would not let him sail. Then they went 
away to Bridport ; and, coming to the inn there, found 
the stable-yard full of soldiers who were on the lookout 
for Charles, and who talked about him while they drank. 
He had such presence of mind, that he led the horses of his 
party through the yard as any other servant might have 
done, and said, "Come out of the way, you soldiers; let 
us have room to pass here ! " As he went along, he met 
a half-tipsy ostler, who rubbed his eyes and said to him, 
" Why, I was formerly servant to Mr. Potter at Exeter, 
and surely I have sometimes seen you there, young man ? " 
He certainly had, for Charles had lodged there. His 
ready answer was, " Ah, I did live with him once ; but I 
have no time to talk now. We'll have a pot of beer to- 
gether when I come back." 

From this dangerous place he returned to Trent, and 
lay there concealed several days. Then he escaped to 
Heale, near Salisbury ; where, in the house of a widow 
lady, he was hidden five days, until the master of a collier 
laying off Shoreham in Sussex, undertook to convey a 
" gentleman " to France. On the night of the fifteenth 
of October, accompanied by two colonels and a merchant, 
the King rode to Brighton, then a little fishing village, to 
give the captain of the ship a supper before going on 
board ; but, so many people knew him, that this captain 
knew him too, and not only he, but the landlord and 
landlady also. Before he went away, the landlord came 
behind his chair, kissed his hand, and said he hoped to 
live to be a lord and to see his wife a lady ; at which 
Charles laughed. They had had a good supper by this 
time, and plenty of smoking and drinking, at which the 
King was a first-rate hand ; so 3 the captain assured him 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 363 

that he would stand by him, and he did. It was agreed that 
the captain should pretend to sail to Deal, and that Charles 
shoulcT address the sailors and say he was a gentleman 
in debt who was running away from his creditors, and 
that he hoped they would join him in persuading the 
captain to put him ashore in France. As the King acted 
his part very well indeed, and gave the sailors twenty 
shillings, to drink, they begged the captain to do what 
such a worthy gentleman asked. He pretended to yield 
to their entreaties, and the King got safe to Normandy. 

Ireland being now subdued, and Scotland kept quiet 
by plenty of forts and soldiers put there by Oliver, the 
Parliament would have gone on quietly enough, as far 
as fighting with any foreign enemy went, but for getting 
into trouble with the Dutch, who in the spring of the 
year one thousand six hundred and fifty-one sent a fleet 
into the Downs under their Admiral van Tromp, to call 
upon the bold English Admiral Blake (who was there 
with half as many ships as the Dutch) to strike his flag* 
Blake fired a raging broadside instead, and beat off Van 
Tromp ; who, in the autumn, came back again with 
seventy ships, and challenged the bold Blake — who still 
was only half as strong — to fight him. Blake fought.him 
all day ; but, finding that the Dutch were too many for 
him, got quietly off at night. What does Van Tromp 
upon this, but goes cruising and boasting about the Chan- 
nel, between the North Foreland and the Isle of Wight, 
with a great Dutch broom tied to his masthead, as a sign 
that he could and would sweep the English off the sea! 
Within three months, Blake lowered his tone though, 
and his broom too; for he and two other bold com- 
manders, Dean and Monk, fought him three whole days, 
took twenty-three of his ships, shivered his broom to 
pieces, and settled his business. 

Things were no sooner quiet again, than the army be- 
gan to complain to the Parliament that they were not 
governing the nation properly, and to hint that they 
thought they could do it better themselves. Oliver, who 
had now made up his mind to be the head of the state, 
or nothing at all, supported them in this, and called a 
meeting of officers and his own Parliamentary friends, 
at his lodgings in Whitehall, to consider the best way 
Qf getting rid of the Parliament, It had now lasted just 



364 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND, 

as many years as the King's unbridled power had lasted, 
before it came into existence. The end of the delibera- 
tion was, that Oliver went down to the House in his usual 
plain black dress, with his usual gray worsted stockings, 
but with an unusual party of soldiers behind him. These 
last he left in the lobby, and then went in and sat down. 
Presently he got up, made the Parliament a speech, told 
them that the Lord had done with them, stamped his 
foot and said, "You are no Parliament. Bring them in. 
Bring them in ! " At this signal the door flew open, and 
the soldiers appeared. " This is not honest," said Sir 
Harry Vane, one of the members. " Sir Harry Vane ! " 
cried Cromwell; a O, Sir Harry Vane! The Lord de- 
liver me from Sir Harry Vane ! " Then he pointed out 
members one by one, and said this man was a drunkard, 
and that man a dissipated fellow, and that man a liar, and 
so on. Then he caused the Speaker to be walked out of 
his chair, told the guard to clear the House, called the 
mace upon the table — which is a sign that the House is 
sitting — " a fool's bauble," and said, " here, carry it 
away!" Being obeyed in all these orders, he quietly 
locked the door, put the key in his pocket, walked back 
to Whitehall again, and told his friends, who were still 
assembled there, what he had done. 

They formed a new Council of State after this ex- 
traordinary proceeding, and got a new Parliament to- 
gether in their own way: which Oliver himself opened 
in a sort of sermon, and which he said was the begin- 
ning of a perfect heaven upon earth. In this Parliament 
there sat a well-known leather-seller, who had taken the 
singular name of Praise God Barebones, and from whom 
it was called, for a joke, Barebones's Parliament, though 
its general name was the Little Parliament. As it soon 
appeared that it was not going to put Oliver in the first 
place, it turned out to be not at all like the beginning of 
heaven upon earth, and Oliver said it really was not to 
be borne with. So he cleared off that Parliament in 
much the same way as he had disposed of the other ; and 
then the council of officers decided that he must be made 
the supreme authority of the kingdom, under the title of 
the Lord Protector of the Commonwealth. 

So, on the sixteenth of December, one thousand six 
hundred and fifty-three, a great procession was formed 



A CHILD'S HISTOET OF ENGLAND. S65 

at Oliver's door, and he came out in a black velvet suit 
and a big pair of boots, and. got into bis coach and went 
down to Westminster, attended by the judges, and the 
lord mayor, and the aldermen, and all the other great 
and wonderful personages of the country. There, in the 
Court of Chancery, he publicly accepted the office of 
Lord Protector. Then he was sworn, and the City sword 
was handed to him, and the seal was handed to him, and 
all the other things were handed to him which are usually 
handed to Kings and Queens on state occasions. When 
Oliver had handed them all back, he was quite made 
and completely finished off as Lord Protector ; and several 
of the Ironsides preached about it at great length, all the 



Second Part. 

Oliver Cromwell — whom the people long called Old 
Noll — in accepting the office of Projector, had bound 
himself by a certain paper which was handed to him, 
called "the Instrument," to summon a Parliament, con- 
sisting of between four and five hundred members, in the 
election of which neither the Royalists nor the Catholics 
jwere to have any share. He had also pledged himself 
[that this Parliament should not be dissolved without its 
(Own consent until it had sat five months. 

When this Parliament met, Oliver made a speech to them 
jof three hours long, very wisely advising them what to 
|clo for the credit and happiness of the country. To keep 
jdown. the more violent members, he required them to 
.sign a recognition of what they were forbidden by " the 
Instrument" to do; which was, chiefly, to take the 
ipower from one single person at the head of the state or 
II command the army. Then lie dismissed them to go 
j:o work. With his usual vigor and resolution lie went 
1 50 work himself with some frantic preachers — who were 
jfttlrer overdoing their sermons in calling him a villain 
Und a tyrant — by shutting up their chapels, and sending 
1 few of them off to prison. 

There was not at that time, in England or anywhere 
pise, a man so able to govern the country "as Oliver Crom- 
! veil. Although he ruled with a strong hand, and levied 
i very heavy tax on the Royalists (but not until they had 



366 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND, 

plotted against his life), he ruled wisely, and as the times 
required. He caused England to be so respected abroad, 
that I wish some lords and gentlemen who have governed 
it under kings and queens in later days would have 
taken a leuf out of Oliver Cromwell's book. He sent bold 
Admiral Blake to tne Mediterranean Sea, to make the 
Duke of Tuscany pay sixty thousand pounds for injuries 
he had done to British subjects, and spoliation he had 
committed on English merchants. He further de- 
spatched him and his fleet to Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, 
to have every English ship and every English man de- 
livered up to him that had been taken by pirates in those 
parts. All this was gloriously clone; and it began to be 
thoroughly well known, all over the world, that England 
was governed by a man in earnest, who would not allow 
the English name to be insulted or slighted anywhere. 

These were not all his foreign triumphs. He sent a 
fleet to sea against the Dutch ; and the two powers, each 
with one hundred ships upon its side, met in the Eng- 
lish Channel off the North Foreland, where the fight lasted 
all day long. Dean was killed in this fight; but Monk, 
who commanded in the same ship with him, threw his 
cloak over his body, that the sailors might not know of 
his death, and bedisheartened s Nor were they. The Eng- 
lish broadsides so exceedingly astonished the Dutch that 
they sheered off at last, though the redoubtable Van 
Tromp fired upon them with his own guns for deserting 
their flag. Soon afterwards, the two fleets engaged 
again, off the coast of Holland. There, the valiant Van 
Tromp was shot through the heart, and the Dutch gave 
in, and peace was made. 

Further than this, Oliver resolved not to bear the dom 
ineering and bigoted conduct of Spain, which country 
not only claimed a right- to all the gold and silver that 
could be found in South America, and treated the ships 
of all other countries who visited those regions, as pirates,; 
but put English subjects into the horrible Spanish pris- 
ons of the Inquisition. So, Oliver told the Spanish am- 
bassador that English ships must be free to go wherever! 
they would, and that English merchants must not be 
thrown into those same dungeons, no, not for the pleas- 1 
ure of all the priests in Spain. To this, the Spanish am- 
bassador replied that the gold and silver country, aad! 






A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 367 

the Holy Inquisition, were his King's two eyes, neither 
of which he could submit to have put out. Very well, 
said Oliver, then he was afraid he (Oliver) must damage 
those two eyes directly. 

So, another fleet was despatched under two command- 
ders, Penn and Venable, for Hispaniola ; where, how- 
ever, the Spaniards got the better of the fight. Conse- 
quently, the fleet came home again, after taking Jamaica 
on the way. Oliver, indignant with the two command- 
ers, who had not done what bold Admiral Blake would 
have done, clapped them both into prison, declared war 
against Spain, and made a treaty with France, in virtue 
of which it was to shelter the King and his brother the 
Duke of York no longer. Then, he sent a fleet abroad 
under bold Admiral Blake, which brought the King of 
Portugal to his senses — just to keep its hand in — and 
then engaged a Spanish fleet, sunk four great ships, 
and took two more, laden with silver to the value of 
two millions of pounds : which dazzling prize was 
brought from Portsmouth to London in wagons, with 
the populace of all the towns and villages through which 
the wagons passed, shouting with all their might. After 
this victory, bold Admiral Blake sailed away to the port 
of Santa Cruz to cut off the Spanish treasure ships com- 
ing from Mexico. There, he found them, ten in number, 
| with seven others to take care of them, and a big castle, 
and seven batteries, all roaring and blazing away at him 
with great guns. Blake cared no more for great guns 
than for pop-guns — no more for their hot iron balls than 
I for snowballs. He dashed into the harbor, captured and 
, burnt every one of the ships, and came sailing out again 
triumphantly, with the victorious English flag flying at 
his masthead. This was the last triumph of this great 
commander, who had sailed and fought until he was quite 
worn out. He died, as his successful ship was coming 
'into Plymouth Harbor, amidst the joyful acclamations 
I of the people, and was buried in state iii Westminster 
jjAbbey. Not to lie there long. 

Over and above all this, Oliver found that the Vaudois, 
H Protestant people of the valleys of Lucerne, were in- 
solently treated by the Catholic powers, and were even 
out to death for their religion, in an audacious and bloody 
manner, Instantly, he informed those powers that thi§ 



S68 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

was a thing which Protestant England would not allow; 
and he speedily carried his point, through the might of 
his great name, and established their right to worship 
God in peace after their own harmless manner. 

Lastly, his English army won such admiration in 
fighting with the French against the Spaniards, that, 
after they had assaulted the town of Dunkirk together, 
the French King in person gave it up to the English, 
that it might be a token to them of their might and 
valor. 

There were plots enough against Oliver among the 
frantic religionists (who called themselves Fifth Mon- 
archy Men), and among the disappointed Republicans. 
He had a difficult game to play, for the Royalists were 
always ready to side with either party against him. The 
"King over the water," too, as Charles was called, had no 
scruples about plotting with any one against his life; 
although there is reason to suppose that he would will- 
ingly have married one of his daughters, if Oliver would 
have had such a son-in-law. There was a certain Colonel 
Saxby of the army, once a great supporter of Oliver's but 
now turned against him, who was a grievous trouble to 
him through all this part of his career; and who came 
and went between the discontented in England and Spain, 
and Charles Who put himself in alliance with Spain on 
being thrown off by France. This man died in prison at 
last^ but not, until there had been very serious plots be- 
tween the Royalists and Republicans, and an actual ris- 
ing of them in England, when they burst into the city of 
Salisbury on a Sunday night, seized the judges who were 
going to hold the assizes there next day, and would have 
hanged them but for the merciful objections of the more 
temperate of their number. Oliver was so vigorous and 
shrewd that he soon put this revolt down, as he did 
most other conspiracies ; and it was well for one of its 
chief managers — that same Lord Wilmot who had assisted; 
in Charles's flight, and was now Earl of Rochester — | 
that he made his escape. Oliver seemed to have eyes and! 
ears everywhere, and secured such sources of information 
as his enemies little dreamed of. There was a chosen 
body of six persons, called the Sealed Knot, who were 
in the closest and most secret confidence of Charles. One 
of the foremost of these very men, a Sir Richard Willis, 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 869 

reported to Oliver everything that passed among them, 
and had two hundred a year for it. 

JVIiles Syndarcomb, also of the old army, was another 
conspirator against the Protector. He and a man named 
Cecil, bribed one of his Life Guards to let them have good 
notice when he was going- out — intending to shoot him 
from a window. But, owing either to his caution or his 
good-fortune, they could never get an aim at him. Dis- 
appointed in this design, they got into the chapel in 
Whitehall, with a basketful of combustibles, which were 
to explode by means of a slow match in six hours; then, 
in the noise and confusion of the fire, they hoped to kill 
Oliver. But, the Life Guardsman himself disclosed this 
Iplot; and they were seized, and Miles died (or killed him- 
iself in prison) a little while before he was ordered for 
execution. A few such plotters Oliver caused to be be- 
headed, a few more to be hanged, and many more, includ- 
ing those who rose in arms against him, to be sent as 
tslaves to the West Indies. If he were rigid, he was im- 
partial too, in asserting the laws of England. When a 
jportuguese nobleman, t lie brother of the Portuguese am- 
Ibassador, killed a London citizen in mistake for another 
man with whom he had had a quarrel, Oliver caused him 
to be tried before a jury of Englishmen and foreigners, 
and had him executed in spite of the entreaties of all the 
Embassadors in London. 

One of Oliver's own friends, the Duke of Oldenburgh, 
in sending him a present of six fine coach-horses, was very 
near doing more to please the Royalists than all the plot- 
ters put together. One day, Oliver went with his coach, 
jfirawn by these six horses, into Hyde Park, to dine with 
his secretary and some of his other gentlemen under the 
trees there. After dinner, being merry, he took it into 
'his head to put his friends inside and to drive them 
home: a postilion riding one of the foremost horses, as 
the custom was. On account of Oliver's being too free 
with the whip, the six fine horses went off at a gallop, 
the postilion got thrown, and Oliver fell upon the coach- 
pole and narrowly escaped being shot by his own pistol, 
which got entangled with his clothes in the harness, and 
went off. lie was dragged some distance by the foot, 
until his foot came out of the shoe, and then he came 
safely to the ground under the broad body of the coach, 



870 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

and was very little the worse. The gentlemen inside 
were only bruised, and the discontented people of all par- 
ties were much disappointed. 

The rest of the history of the Protectorate of Oliver 
Cromwell is a history of his Parliaments. His first one 
not pleasing him at all, he waited until the five months 
were out, and then dissolved it. The next was better 
suited to his views : and from that he desired to get — if 
he could with safety to himself — the title of King. He 
had had this in his mind some time : whether because he 
thought that the English people, being more used to the 
title, were more likely to obey it ; or whether because he 
really wished to be a king himself, and to leave the succes- 
sion to that title in his family, is far from clear. He was 
already as high, in England and in all the world, as he 
would ever be, and I doubt if he cared for the mere name. 
However, a paper, called the " Humble Petition and Ad- 
vice," was presented to him by the House of Commons, 
praying him to take a high title and to appoint his suc- 
cessor. That he would have taken the title of King there 
is no doubt, but for the strong opposition of the army. 
This induced him to forbear, and to assent only to the other 
points of the petition. Upon which occasion there was an- 
other grand show in Westminster Hall, when the Speaker 
of the House of Commons formally invested him with a 
purple robe lined with ermine, and presented him with a 
splendidly bound Bible, and put a golden sceptre in his 
hand. The next time the Parliament met, he called a 
House of Lords of sixty members, as the petition gave 
him power to do ; but as that Parliament did not please 
him either, and would not proceed to the business of the 
country, he jumped into a coach one morning, took six 
Guards with him, and sent them to the right-about. I 
wish this had been a warning to Parliaments to avoid 
long speeches, and do more work. 

It was the month of August, one thousand six hundred 
and fifty-eight, when Oliver Cromwell's favorite daughter, 
Elizabeth Claypole (who had lately lost her youngest 
son), lay very ill, and -his mind was greatly troubled, be- 
cause he loved her clearly. Another of his daughters 
was married to Lord Falconberg, another to the grand- 
son of the Earl of Warwick, and he had made his son 
Richard one of the Members of the Upper House. He 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 371 

Was very kind and loving to them all, being a good father 
and a good husband ; but he loved this daughter the best 
of the family, and went down to Hampton Court to see 
her, and could hardly be induced to stir from her sick- 
loom until she died. Although his religion had been of 
a gloomy kind," his disposition had been always cheerful. 
He had been fond of music in his home, and had kept 
open table once a week for all officers of the army not 
below the rank of captain, and had always preserved in 
his house a quiet sensible dignity. He encouraged men 
of genius and learning, and loved to have them about 
him. Milton was one of his good friends. He was good- 
humored too, with the nobility, whose dresses and man- 
ners were very different from his; and to show them 
what good information he had, he would sometimes jok- 
ingly tell them when they were his guests, where they 
had last drank the health of the "King over the water," 
and would recommend them to be more private (if they 
could) another time. But he had lived in busy times, 
had borne the weight of heavy State affairs, and had 
often gone in fear of his life. He was ill of the gout and 
ague ; and when the death of his beloved child came upon 
him in addition, he sank, never to raise his head again. 
He told his physicans on the twenty-fourth of August 
that the Lord had assured him that he was not to die in 
jthat illness, and that he would certainly get better. 
j This was only his sick fancy, for on the third of Septem- 
ber, which was the anniversary of the great battle of 
' Worcester, and the day of the year which he called his 
[fortunate day, he died, in the sixtieth year of his age. 
He had been delirious, and had lain insensible some 
[hours, but he had been overheard to murmur a very 
| good prayer the day before. The whole country lamented 
[his death. If you want to know the real worth of Oliver 
i Cromwell, and his real services to his country, you can 
'hardly do better than compare England under him with 
j England under Charles the Second. 

He had appointed his son Richard to succeed him, and 
after there had been, at Somerset House in the Strand, 
a-lying in state more splendid than sensible — as all such 
canities, after death are, I think — Richard became Lord 
Protector. He was an amiable country gentleman, but 
bad none of his father's great genius, and was quite unfit 



372 A CHILD'S BISTORT OF ENGLAND. 

for such a post in such a storm of parties. Richard's 
Protectorate, which only lasted a year and a half, is a 
history of quarrels between the officers of the army and 
the Parliament, and between the officers among them- 
selves; and of a growing discontent among the people, 
who had far too many long sermons and far too few 
amusements, and wanted a change. At last General 
Monk got the army well into his own hands, and then 
in pursuance of a secret plan he seems to have enter- 
tained from the time of Oliver's death, declared for the 
King's cause. He did not do this openly ; but, in his 
place in the House of Commons, as one of the members 
for Devonshire, strongly advocated the proposals of one 
Sir John Greenville, who came to the House with a letter 
from Charles, dated from Breda, and with whom he had 
previously been in secret communication. There had 
been plots and counterplots, and a recall of the hist mem- 
bers of the Long Parliament, and an end of the Long Par- 
liament, and risings of the Royalists that were made too 
soon; and most men being tired out, and there being no 
one to head the country now great Oliver was dead, it 
was readily agreed to welcome Charles Stuart. Some of 
the wiser and better members said — what was most true 
— that in the letter from Breda, he gave no real promise 
to govern well, and that it would be best to make him 
pledge himself beforehand as to what he should be bound 
to do for the benefit of the kingdom. Monk said, however, 
it would be all right when he came, and he could not come 
too soon. 

So, everybody found out all in a moment that the country 
must be prosperous and happy, having another Stuart to 
condescend to reign over it; and there was a prodigious 
firing off of guns, lighting of bonfires, ringing of bells, and 
throwing up of caps. The people drank the King's health 
by thousands in the open .streets, and everybody rejoiced. 
Down came the Arms of the Commonwealth, up went the 
Royal Arms instead, and out came the public money. 
Fifty thousand pounds for the King, ten thousand pounds 
for his brother the Duke of York, five thousand pounds for 
his brother the Duke of Gloucester. Prayers for these 
gracious Stuarts were put up in all the churches; com- 
missioners were sent to Holland (which suddenly found 
out that Charles was a great man, and that it loved him) to 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND, B?3 

invite the King home; Monk and the Kentish grandees 
went to Dover, to kneel down before him as. he landed. 
.He kissed and embraced Monk, made him ride in the coach 
with himself and his brothers, came on to London amid 
wonderful shoutings, and passed through the army at 
Blackheath on the twenty-ninth of May (his birthday), in 
the year one thousand six hundred and sixty. Greeted 
by splendid dinners under tents, by flags and tapestry 
streaming from all the houses, by delighted crowds in all 
the streets, by troops of noblemen and gentlemen in rich 
dresses, by City companies, train-bands, drummers, trum- 
peters, the great Lord Mayor, and the majestic Aldermen, 
the King went on to Whitehall. On entering it, he com- 
memorated his Restoration with the joke that it really 
would seem to have been his own fault that he had not 
come long ago, since everybody told him that he had 
always wished for him with all his heart. 



CHAPTER XXXV. 

ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND, CALLED THE MERRY 
MONARCH. 

First Part. 

There never were such profligate times in England as 
under Charles the Second. Whenever you see his pro- 
trait, with his swarthy ill-looking face and great nose, you 
may fancy him in his Court at Whitehall, surrounded by 
some of the very worst vagabonds in the kingdom (though 
they were lords and ladies)* drinking, gambling, indulging 
in vicious conversation, and committing every kind of 
profligate excess. It has been a fashion to cail Charles 
the Second "The Merry Monarch." Let me try to give 
you a general idea of some of the merry things that were 
done, in the merry days when this merry gentleman sat 
upon his merry throne, in merry England. 

The first merry proceeding was — of course — to declare 
that he was one of the greatest, the wisest, and the no- 
blest kings that ever shone, like the blessed sun itself, on 
this benighted earth. The next merry and pleasant piece 



g?4 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF MNQLANB. 

of business was, for the Parliament, in the humblest man- 
ner, to give him one million two hundred thousand pounds 
a year, and to settle upon him for life that old disputed 
tonnage and poundage which had been so bravely fought 
for. Then, General Monk being made Earl of Albe- 
marle, and a few other Royalists similarly rewarded, the 
law went to work to see what was to be done to those 
persons (they were called Regicides) who had been con- 
cerned in making a* martyr of the late King. Ten of these 
were merrily executed; that is to say, six of the judges, 
one of the council, Colonel Hacker and another officer who 
had commanded the Guards, and Hugh Peters, a preacher 
who had preached against the martyr with all his heart. 
These executions were so extremely merry, that every 
horrible circumstance which Cromwell had abandoned 
was revived with appalling cruelty. The hearts of the 
sufferers were torn out of their living bodies ; their bowels 
were burned before their faces ; the executioner cut jokes 
to the next victim, as he rubbed his filthy hands together 
that were reeking with the blood of the last ; and the 
heads of the dead were drawn on sledges with the living 
to the place of suffering. Still, even so merry a monarch 
could not force one of these dying men to say that he was 
sorry for what he had done. Nay the most memorable 
thing said among them was, that if the thing were to do 
again they would do it. 

Sir Harry Vane, who had furnished the evidence against 
Strafford, and was one of the most stanch of the Republi- 
cans, was also tried, found guilty, and ordered for execu- 
tion. When he came upon the scaffold on Tower Hill, 
after conducting his own defence with great power, his 
notes of what he had meant to say to the people were torn 
away from him, and the drums and trumpets were or- 
dered to sound lustily and drown his voice ; for, the people 
had been so much impressed by what the Regicides had 
calmly said with their last breath, that it was the custom 
now, to have the drums and trumpets always under the 
scaffold, ready to strike up. Vane said no more than this : 
"It is a bad cause which cannot bear the words of a dying 
man : " and bravely died. 

These merry scenes were succeeded by another, per- 
haps even merrier. On the anniversary of the late King's 
death, the bodies of Oliver Cromwell, Ireton, and Brad- 



A CBILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 37b 

shaw, were torn out of their graves in Westminster Abbey 
dragged to Tyburn, hanged there on a gallows all day long, 
and then beheaded. Imagine the head of Oliver Cromwell 
set upon a pole to be stared at by a brutal crowd, not one 
of whom would have dared to look the living Cromwell 
in the face for half a moment! Think, after you have 
read this reign, what England was under Oliver Cromwell 
who was torn out of his grave, and what it was under this 
merry monarch who sold it like a merry Judas, over and 
over again. 

r Of course, the remains of Oliver's wife and daughter 
were not to be spared either, though they had been most 
excellent women. The base clergy of that time gave up 
their bodies, which had been buried in the Abbey, and — 
to the eternal disgrace of England — they were" thrown 
into a pit, together with the mouldering bones of Pym and 
of the brave and bold Admiral Blake. 

The clergy acted this disgraceful part because they 
hoped to get the nonconformists, or dissenters, thoroughly 
put down in this reign, and to have but one prayer-book 
and one service for all kinds of people, no matter what 
their private opinions were. This was pretty well, I 
think, for a Protestant Church, which had displaced the 
Romish Church because people had a right to their own 
opinions in religious matters. However, J^hey carried it 
with a high hand, and a prayer-book was agreed upon, 
in which the extremest opinions of Archbishop Laud 
were not forgotten. An Act was passed, too, preventing 
any dissenter from holding any office under any corpo- 
ration. So the regular clergy in their triumph were soon 
as merry as the King. The army being by this time 
disbanded, and the King crowned, everything was to go 
on easily for evermore. 

I must say a word here about the King's family. He 
had not been long upon the throne when his brother the 
Duke of Gloucester, and his sister the Princess of Orange 
died within a few months of each other, of small-pox. 
His remaining sister, the Princess Henrietta, married 
the Duke of Orleans, the brother of Louis the Four- 
teenth, king of France. His brother, James, Duke of 
York, was made High Admiral, and by and by became a 
Catholic. He was a gloomy sullen bilious sort of man, 
with a remarkable partiality for the ugliest women in, 



876 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

the country. He married, under very discreditable cir- 
cumstances, Anne Hyde, the daughter of Lord Claren- 
don, then the King's principal Minister — not at all a 
delicate minister either, but doing much of the dirty 
work of a very dirty palace. It became important now 
that the King himself should be married; and divers 
foreign Monarchs, not very particular about the charac- 
ter of their son-in-law, proposed their daughters to him. 
The King of Portugal offered his daughter, Catherine 
of Braganza, and fifty thousands pounds : in addition to 
which, the French King, who was favorable to that match, 
offered a loan of another fifty thousand. The King of 
Spain, on the other hand, offered any one out of a dozen 
of Princesses, and other hopes of gain. But the ready 
money carried the day, and Catherine came over in state 
to her merry marriage. 

The whole Court was a great flaunting crowd of de- 
bauched men and shameless women ; and Catherine's 
merry husband insulted and outraged her in every pos- 
sible way, until she consented to receive those worthless 
creatures as her very good friends, and to degrade her- 
self by their companionship. A Mrs. Palmer whom the 
King made Lady Castlemaine, and afterwards "Duchess 
of Cleveland, was one of the most powerful of the bad 
women about the Court, and had great influence with 
the King nearly all through his reign. Another merry 
lady named Moll Davies, a dancer at the theatre, was 
afterwards her rival. So was Nell Gwyn, first an orange 
girl and then an actress, who really had good in her, and. 
of whom one of the worst things I know is, that she actu- 
ally does seem to have been fond of the King. The first 
Duke of St. Albans was this orange giiTs child. In 
like manner the son of a merry waiting-lady, whom the 
King created Duchess of Portsmouth, became the Duke 
of Richmond. Upon the whole it is not so bad a thing to 
be a commoner. 

The Merry Monarch was so exceedingly merry among 
these merry ladies, and some equally merry (and equally 
infamous) lords and gentlemen, that he soon got through 
his hundred thousand pounds, and then, by way of rais- 
ing a little pocket-money, made a merry bargain. Ifo 
sold Dunkirk to the French King for five millions of 
livres. When I think of the dignity to which Oliver 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 877 

Cromwell raised England in the eyes of foreign powers, 
and when I think of the manner in which he gained for 
England this very Dunkirk, I am much inclined to con- 
sider that if the Merry Monarch had been made to follow 
his father for this action, he would have received his just 
deserts. 

Though he was like his father in none of that father's 
greater qualities, he was like him in being worthy of no 
trust. When he sent that letter to the Parliament, from 
Breda, he did expressly promise that all sincere religious 
opinions should be respected. Yet he was no sooner 
firm in his power than he consented to one of the worst 
Acts of Parliament ever passed. Under this law, every 
minister who should not give his solemn assent to the 
Prayer-Book by a certain day, was declared to be a min- 
ister no longer, and to be deprived of his church. The 
consequence of this was, that some two thousand honest 
men wer^e taken from their congregations, and reduced 
to dire poverty and distress. It was followed by another 
outrageois law, called the Conventicle Act, by which 
any person above the age of sixteen who was present at 
any religious service not according to the Prayer- Book, 
was to Le imprisoned three months for the first offence, 
and six for the second, and to be transported for the 
third. This Act alone filled the prisons, which were then 
most dreadful dungeons, to overflowing. 

The Covenanters in Scotland hud already fared no 
better. A base Parliament, usually known as theDrunken 
Parliament, in consequence of its principal members being 
seldom sober, had been got together to make laws against 
the Covenanters, and to force all men to be of one mind 
in religious matters. The Marquis of Argyle, relying 
on the King's honor, had given himself up to him; but, 
he was wealthy, and his enemies wanted his wealth. He 
was tried for treason, on the evidence of some private 
letters in which he had expressed opinions — as well he 
might — more favorable to the Government of the late 
Lord Protector than of the present merry and religious 
King. He was executed, as were two men of mark among 
the Covenanters; and Sharp, a traitor who had once been 
the friend of the Presbyterians and betrayed them, was 
made Archbishop of St. Andrews, to teach the Scotch how 
to like bishops. 



378 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

Things being in this merry state at home, the Merry 
Monarch undertook a war with the Dutch ; principally 
because they interfered with an African company, estab- 
lished with the two objects of buying gold-dust and slaves, 
of which the Duke of York was a leading member. After 
some preliminary hostilities, the said Duke sailed to the 
coast of Holland with a fleet of ninety-eight vessels of 
war, and four fire-ships. This engaged with the Dutch 
fleet, of no fewer than one hundred and thirteen ships. 
In the great battle between the two forces, the Dutch lost 
eighteen ships, four admirals, and seven thousand men. 
But, the English on shore were in no mood of exultation 
when they heard the news. 

For, this was the year and the time of the Great Plague 
in London. During the winter of one thousand six hun- 
dred and sixty-four it had been whispered about, that 
some few people had died here and there of the disease 
called the Plague, in some of the unwholesome suburbs 
around London. News was not published at that time 
as it is now, and some people believed these rumors, and 
some disbelieved them, and they were soon forgotten. 
But, in the month of May, one thousand six hundred and 
sixty-five, it began to be said all over the town, that the 
disease had burst out with great violence in St. Giles's, 
and that the people were dying in great numbers. This 
soon turned out to be awfully true. The roads out of 
London were choked up by people endeavoring to escape 
from the infected city, and large sums were paid for any 
kind of conveyance. The disease soon spread so fast, 
that it was necessary to shut up the houses in which sick 
people were, and to cut them off from communication with 
the living. Every one of these houses was marked on 
the outside of the door with a red cross, and the words, 
Lord, have mercy upon us ! The streets were all deserted, 
grass grew in the public ways, and there was a dreadful 
silence in the air. When night came on, dismal rum- 
blings used to be heard, and these were the wheels of the 
v death-carts, attended by men with veiled faces and hold- 
ing cloths to their mouths, who rang doleful bells and 
cried in a loud and solemn voice, " Bring out your dead ! " 
The corpses put into these carts were buried by torch- 
light in great pits ; no service being performed over them ; 
all men being afraid to stay for a moment on the brink of 



A CHILD'S HISTORY- OF ENGLAND. 379 

the ghastly graves. In the general fear, children ran 
away from their parents, and parents from their children. 
Some who were taken ill, died alone, and without any 
help. Some were stabbed or strangled by hired nurses 
who robbed them of all their money, and stole the very 
beds on which they lay. Some went mad, dropped froiii 
the windows, ran through the streets, and in their pain 
and frenzy flung themselves into the river. 

These were not all the horrors of the time. The wicked 
and dissolute, in wild desperation, sat in the taverns sing- 
ing roaring songs, and were stricken as they drank, and 
went out and died. The fearful and superstitious per- 
suaded themselves that they saw supernatural sights — 
burning swords in the sky, gigantic arms and darts. 
Others pretended that at nights vast crowds of ghosts 
walked round and round the dismal pits. One madman, 
naked, and carrying a brazier full of burning coals upon 
his head, stalked through the streets, crying out that he 
was a Prophet, commissioned to denounce the vengeance 
of the Lord on wicked London. Another always went 
to and fro, exclaiming, " Yet forty days, and London shall 
be -destroyed! " A third awoke the echoes in the dismal 
streets, by night and by day, and made the blood of the 
sick run cold, by calling out incessantly, in a deep hoarse 
voice, "O, the great and dreadful God! " 

Through the months of July and August and September, 
the Great Plague raged more and more. Great tires were 
lighted in the streets, in the hope of stopping the in- 
fection ; but there was a plague of rain, too, and it beat 
the fires out. At last, the winds which usually arise at 
that time of the year which is called the equinox, when 
day and night are of equal length all over the world, 
began to blow, and to purify the wretched town. The 
deaths began to decrease, the red crosses slowly to dis- 
appear, the fugitives to return, the shops to open, pale 
frightened faces to be seen in the streets. The Plague 
had been in every part of England, but in close and un- 
wholesome London it had killed one hundred thousand 
people. 

All this time, the Merry Monarch was as merry as ever, 
and as worthless as ever. All this time, the debauched 
lords and gentlemen and the shameless ladies danced 
and gamed and drank, and loved and hated one another, 



880 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND* 

according to their merry ways. So little humanity did 
the government learn from the late affliction, that one of 
the first things the Parliament did when it met at Oxford 
(being as yet afraid to come to London), was to make a 
law, called the Five Mile Act, expressly directed against 
those poor ministers who, in the time of the Plague, had 
manfully come back to comfort the unhappy people. 
This infamous law, by forbidding them to teach in any 
school, or to come within five miles of any city, town, or 
village, doomed them to starvation and death. 

The fleet had been at sea, and healthy. The King of 
France was now in alliance with the Dutch, though his 
navy was chiefly employed in looking on while the English 
and Dutch fought. The Dutch gained one victory ; and 
the English gained another and a greater ; and Prince 
Rupert, one of the English admirals, was out in the 
Channel one windy night, looking for the French Admiral, 
with the intention of giving him something more to do 
than he had had yet, when the gale increased to a storm, 
and blew him into St. Helen's. That night was the third 
of September, one thousand six hundred and v sixty-six, 
and that wind fanned the Great Fire of London. 

It broke out at a baker's shop near London Bridge, on 
the spot on which the Monument now stands as a 
remembrance of those raging flames. It spread and 
spread, and burned and burned, for three days. The 
nights were lighter than the days; in the daytime there 
was an immense cloud of smoke, and in the night-time 
there was a great tower of fire mounting up into the sky, 
which lighted the whole country landscape for ten miles 
round. Showers of hot ashes rose into the air and fell 
on distant places; flying sparks carried the conflagration 
to great distances, and kindled it in twenty new spots at 
a time; church steeples fell down with tremendous 
crashes ; houses crumbled into cinders by the bundled 
and the thousand. The summer had been intensely hot 
and dry, the streets were very narrow, and the houses 
mostly built of wood and planter. Nothing could stop 
the tremendous fire, but the want of more houses to burn ; 
nor did it stop until the whole way from the Tower to 
Temple Bar was a desert, composed ot the ashes of thir- 
teen thousand houses and eighty-nine churches. 

This was a terrible visitation at the time ? and occasione4 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 381 

great loss and suffering to the two hundred thousand 
burnt-out people, who were obliged to lie in the fields 
under the open night sky, or in hastily made huts of mud 
and straw, while the lanes and roads were rendered im- 
passable by carts which had broken down as they tried to 
save their goods. But the Fire was a great blessing to 
the City afterwards, for it arose from its ruins very much 
improved — built more regularly, more widely, more cleanly 
and carefully, and therefore much more healthily. It 
might be far more healthy than it is, but there are some 
"people in it still — even now, at this time, nearly two 
hundred years later — so selfish, so pig-headed, and so 
ignorant, that I doubt if even another Great Fire would 
warm them up to do their duty. 

The Catholics were accused of having wilfully set 
London in flames ; one poor Frenchman, who had been 
mad for years, even accused himself of having with his 
own hand fired the first house. There is no reasonable 
doubt, however, that the fire was accidental. An inscrip- 
tion on the Monument long attributed it to the Catholics ; 
but it is removed now, and was always a malicious and 
stupid untruth. 

^Second Part. 

That the Merry Monarch might be very merry indeed, 
in the merry times when his people were suffering under 
pestilence and fire, he drank and gambled and flung away 
among his favorites the money which the Parliament had 
voted for the war. The consequence of this was that the 
stout-hearted English sailors were merrily starving of 
want, and dying in the streets ; while the Dutch, under 
their admirals De Witt and De Ruytee, came into the 
River Thames, and up the River Medway as far as Upnor, 
burned the guard-ships, silenced the weak batteries, and 
did what they would to the English coast for six whole 
weeks. Most of the English ships that could have pre- 
vented them had neither powder nor shot on board ; in 
this merry reign, public officers made themselves as merry 
as the King did with the public money; and when it 
was intrusted to them to spend in national defences or 
preparations, they put it into their own pockets with the 
merriest grace in the world. 



382 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

Lord Clarendon had, by this time, run as long a 
course as is usually allotted to the unscrupulous min- 
isters of bad kings. He was impeached by his political 
opponents, but unsuccessfully. The King then com- 
manded him to withdraw from England and retire to 
France, which he did, after defending himself in writing. 
He was no great loss at home, and died abroad some 
seven years afterwards. 

There then came into power a ministry called the Cabal 
Ministry, because it was composed of Lord Clifford, the 
Earl of Arlington, the Duke of Buckingham (a great 
rascal, and the King's most powerful favorite), Lord 
Ashley, and the Duke of Lauderdale, c. a. b. a. l. As 
the French were making conquests in Flanders, the First 
Cabal proceeding was to make a treaty with the Dutch, 
for uniting with Spain to oppose the French. It was no 
sooner made than the Merry Monarch, who always 
wanted to get money without being accountable to a Par- 
liament for his expenditure, apologized to the King 
of France for having had anything to do with it, and con- 
cluded a secret treaty with him, making himself his infa- 
mous pensioner to the amount of two millions of livres 
down, and three millions more a year ; and engaging to 
desert that very Spain, to make war against those very 
Dutch, and to declare himself a Catholic when a con- 
venient time should arrive. This religious king had 
lately been crying to his Catholic brother on the subject 
of his strong desire to be a Catholic ; and now he merrily 
concluded this treasonable conspiracy against the country 
he governed, by undertaking to become one as soon as 
he safely could. For all of which, though he had ten 
merry heads instead of one, he richly deserved to lose 
them by the headsman's axe. 

As his one merry head might have been far from safe, 
if these things had been known, they were kept very quiet, 
and war was declared by France and England against the 
Dutch. But, a very uncommon man, afterwards most 
important to English history and to the religion and 
liberty of this land, arose among them, and for many long 
years defeated the whole projects of France. This was 
William of Nassau, Prince of Orange, son of the last 
Prince of Orange of the same name, who married the 
daughter of Charles the First of England. He was a 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 38S 

young man at this time, only just of age; but he was 
brave, cool, intrepid, and wise. His father had been so 
detested that, upon his death, the Dutch had abolished 
the authority to which this son would have otherwise 
succeeded (Stadtholder it was called), and placed the 
chief power in the hands of John de Witt, who educated 
this young prince. Now, the Prince became very popular, 
and John de Witt's brother Cornelius was sentenced to 
banishment on a false accusation of conspiring to kill him. 
John went to the prison where he was, to take him away 
to exile in his coach ; and a great mob who collected on 
the occasion, then and there cruelly murdered both the 
brothers. This left the government in the hands of the 
Prince, who was really the choice of the nation; and 
from this time he exercised it with the greatest vigor, 
against the whole power of France, under its famous 
generals Conde and Turenne, and in support of the Pro- 
testant religion. It was full seven years before this war 
ended in a treaty of peace made at Nimeguen, and its- 
details ' would occupy a every considerable space. It is 
enough to say that William of Orange established a fa- 
mous character with the whole world ; and that the 
Merry Monarch, adding to and improving on his former 
baseness, bound himself to do everything the King of 
France liked, and nothing the King of France did not 
like, for a pension of one hundred thousand pounds a 
year, which was afterwards doubled. Besides this, the 
King of France, by means of his corrupt ambassador — 
who wrote accounts of his proceedings in England, which 
are not always to be believed, I think — bought our 
English members of Parliament as he wanted them. So, 
in point of fact, during a considerable portion of this 
merry reign, the King of France was the real King of 
this country. 

But there was a better time to come, and it was to come 
(though his royal uncle little thought so) through that 
very William, Prince of Orange. He came over to Eng- 
land, saw Mary, the elder daughter of the Duke of York, 
and married her. We shall see by and by what came of 
that marriage, and why it is never to be forgotten. 

This daughter was a Protestant, but her mother died a 
Catholic. She and her sister Anne, also a Protestant, 
were the only survivors of eight children. Anne after- 



884 A CHILD'S HISTOBY OF ENGLAND. 

wards married George, Prince of Denmark, brother to 
the King of that country. 

Lest you should do the Merry Monarch the injustice of 
supposing that he was even good-humored (except when 
he had everything his own way), or that he was high spir- 
ited and honorable, I will mention here what was done to 
a member of the House of Commons, Sir John Coventry. 
He made a remark in a debate about taxing the theatres, 
which gave the King offence. The King agreed with his 
illegitimate son, who had been born abroad, and whom 
he had made Duke of Monmouth, to take the following 
merry vengeance. To waylay him at night, fifteen armed 
men to one, and to slit his nose with a penknife. Like, 
master, like man. The King's favorite, the Duke of 
Buckingham, was strongly suspected of setting on an as- 
sassin to murder the Duke of Ormond as he was returning 
home from a dinner ; and that Duke's spirited son, Lord 
Ossory, was so persuaded of his guilt, that he said to him 
at Court, even as he stood beside the King, "My lord, I 
know very well that vou are at the bottom of this late 
attempt upon my father. But I give you warning, if he 
ever come to a violent end, his blood shall be upon you, 
and wherever I meet you I will pistol you ! I will do so, 
though I find you standing behind the King's chair; and 
I tell you this in his Majesty's presence, that you may be 
quite sure of my doing what I threaten." Those were 
merry times indeed. 

There was a fellow named BLooD,who was seized for mak- 
ing, with two companions, an audacious attempt to steal 
the crown, the globe, and sceptre, from the place where the 
jewels were kept in the Tower. This robber, who was a 
swaggering ruffian, being taken, declared that he was the 
man who had endeavored to kill the Duke of Ormond, and 
that he had meant to kill the King too, but was overawed 
by the majesty of his appearance, when he might other- 
wise have done it, as he was bathing at Battersea. The 
King being but an ill-looking fellow, I don't believe a 
word of this. VYhether he was flattered, or whether he 
knew that Buckingham had really set Blood on to mur- 
der the Duke, is uncertain. But it is quite certain that 
he pardoned this thief, gave him an estate of five hundred 
a year in Ireland (which had had the honor of giving him 
birth}, and presented him at Court to the debauched lovm 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 385 

and the shameless ladies, who made a great deal of him 
—as I have no doubt they would have made of the Devil 
himself, if the King had introduced him. 

Infamously pensioned as he was, the King still wanted 
money, and consequently was obliged to call Parliaments. 
In these, the great object of the Protestants was to thwart 
the Catholic Duke of York, who married a second time ; 
his new wife being a young lady only fifteen years old, 
the Catholic sister of the Duke of Modena. In this they 
were seconded by the Protestant Dissenters, though to 
their own disadvantage : since, to exclude Catholics from 
power, they were even willing to exclude themselves. The 
King's object was to pretend to be a Protestant, while he 
was really a Catholic ; to swear to the bishops that he was 
devoutly attached to the English Church, while he knew 
he had bargained it away to the King of France; and by 
cheating and deceiving them, and all who were attached 
to royalty, to become despotic and be powerful enough 
to confess what a rascal he was. Meantime, the King of 
France, knowing his merry pensioner well, intrigued with 
the King's opponents in Parliament, as well as with the 
King and his friends. 

The fears that the country had of the Catholic religion 
being restored, if the Duke of York should come to the 
throne, and the low cunning of the King in pretending to 
share their alarms, led to some very terrible results. A 
certain Dr. Tonge, a dull clergyman in the City, fell into 
the hands of a certain Titus Oates, a most infamous 
character, who pretended to have acquired among the Jes- 
uits abroad a knowledge of a great plot for the murder 
of the King, and the re- establishment of the Catholic re- 
ligion. Titus Oates, being produced by this unlucky Dr. 
Tonge and solemnly examined before the council, contra- 
dicted himself in a thousand ways, told the most ridicu- 
lous and improbable stories, and implicated Coleman, the 
Secretary of the Duchess ot" York. Now, although what 
he charged against Coleman was not true, and although 
you and I know very well that the real dangerous 
Catholic plot was that one with the King of France of 
which the Merry Monarch was himself the head, there 
happened to be found among Coleman's papers some 
letters, in which he did praise the days of Bloody Queen 
Mary, and abuse the Protestant religion. This was 



£86 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

great good-fortune for Titus, as it seemed to confirm 
Him ; but better still was in store. Sir Edmundbxjry 
Godfrey, the magistrate who had first examined him, 
being unexpectedly found dead near Primrose Hill, was 
confidently believed to have been killed by the Catholics. 
I think there is no doubt that he had been melancholy mad, 
and that he killed himself ; but he had a great Protestant 
funeral, and Titus was called the Saver of the Nation, and 
received a pension of twelve hundred pounds a year. 

As soon as Oates's wickedness had met with this suc- 
cess, up started another villain, named William Bedloe, 
who, attracted by a reward of five hundred pounds offered 
for the apprehension of the murderers of Godfrey, came 
forward and charged two Jesuits and some other per- 
sons with having committed it at the Queen's desire. 
Oates, going into partnership with this new informer, had 
the audacity to accuse the poor Queen herself of high trea- 
son. Then appeared a third informer, as bad as either of 
the two, and accused a Catholic banker named Stayley 
of having said that the King was the greatest rogue in 
the world (which would not have been far from the truth), 
and that he would kill him with his own hand. This 
banker, being at once tried and executed, Coleman and 
two others were tried and executed. Then, a miserable 
wretch named Prance, a Catholic silversmith, being 
accused by Bedloe, was tortured into confessing that he 
had taken part in Godfrey's murder, and into accusing 
three other men of having committed it. Then, five Jes- 
uits were accused by Oates, Bedloe, and Prance together 
and were all found guilty, and executed on the same kind 
of contradictory and absurd evidence. The Queen's phy 
sician and three monks were next put on their trial ; but 
Oates and Bedloe had for the time gone far enough, and 
these four were acquitted. The public mind, however, 
was so full of a Catholic plot, and so strong against the 
Duke of York, that James consented to obey a written 
order from his brother, and to go with his family to Brus- 
sels, provided that his rights should never be sacrificed 
in his absence to the Duke of Monmouth. The house of 
Commons, not satisfied with this as the King hoped, 
passed a bill to exclude the Duke from ever succeeding 
to the throne. In return, the King dissolved the Parlia- 






A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 387 

ment. He had deserted his old favorite, the Duke of 
Buckingham, who was now in the opposition. 

To give any sufficient idea of the miseries of Scotland 
in this merry reign, would occupy a hundred pages. Be- 
cause the people would not have bishops, and were re- 
solved to stand by their solemn League and Covenant, 
such cruelties were inflicted upon them as to make the 
blood run cold. Ferocious dragoons galloped through 
the country to punish the peasants for deserting the 
churches; sons were banged up at their fathers' doors 
for refusing to disclose where their fathers were con- 
cealed; wives were tortured to death for not betraying 
their husbands; people were taken out of their fields and 
gardens, and shot on the public roads without trial; 
lighted matches were tied to the fingers of prisoners, and 
a most horrible torment called the Boot was invented, and 
constantly applied, which ground and mashed the victims' 
legs with iron wedges. Witnesses were tortured as well 
as prisoners. All the prisons were full ; all the gibbets 
were heavy with bodies : murder and plunder devastated 
the whole country. In spite of all, the Covenanters were 
by no means to be dragged into the churches, and persisted 
in worshipping God as they thought right. A body of 
ferocious Highlanders, turned upon them from the moun- 
tains of their own country, had no greater effect than the 
English dragoons under Graiiame of Claverhouse, the 
most cruel and rapacious of all their enemies, whose name 
will ever be cursed through the length and breadth of 
Scotland. Archbishop Sharp had ever aided and abetted 
all these outrages. But he fell at last ; for, when the in- 
juries of the Scottish people w T ere at their height, he was 
seen, in his coach and six coming across a moor, by a 
body of men headed by one John Balfour, who were 
waiting for another of their oppressors. Upon this they 
cried out that Heaven had delivered him into their hands, 
and "killed him with many wounds. If ever a man de- 
served such a death, I think Archbishop Sharp did. 
^It made a great noise directly, and the Merry Monarch 
— strongly suspected of having goaded the Scottish people 
on, that he might have an excuse for a greater army than 
the Parliament were willing to give him — sent down his 
son, the Duke of Monmouth, as commander-in-chief, w T ith 
instructions to attack the Scottish rebels, or Whigs as 



S8SU A CHILD' S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

they were called, whenever he came up with them. 
Marching with ten thousand men from Edinburgh, he 
found them, in number four or five thousand, drawn up 
at Both well Bridge, by the Clyde. They were soon dis- 
persed ; and Monmouth showed a more humane character 
towards them, than he had shown towards that Member 
of Parliament whose nose he had caused to be slit with 
a penknife. But the Duke of Lauderdale was their bitter 
foe, and sent Claverhouse to finish them. 

As the Duke of York became more and more unpopular 
the Duke of Monmouth became more and more popular. 
It would have been decent in the latter not to have voted 
in favor of the renewed bill for the exclusion of James 
from the throne ; but he did so, much to the King's amuse- 
ment, who used to sit in the House of Lords by the fire, 
hearing the debates, which he said were as good as a play. 
The House of Commons passed the bill by a large majority, 
and it was carried up to the House of Lords by Lord 
Russell, one of the best of the leaders on the Protestant 
side. It was rejected there, chiefly because the bishops 
helped the King to get rid of it ; and the fear of Catholic 
plots revived again. There had been another got up, by 
a fellow out of Newgate, named Dangerfield, which is 
more famous than it deserves to be, under the name of 
the Meal-Tub Plot. This jail-bird having been got out 
of Newgate by a Mrs. Cellier, a Catholic nurse, had 
turned Catholic himself, and, pretended that he knew of 
a plot among the Presbyterians against the King's life. 
This was very pleasant to the Duke of York, who hated 
the Presbyterians, who returned the compliment. He 
gave Dangerfield twenty guineas, and sent him to the 
King his brother. But Dangerfield, breaking down alto- 
gether in his charge, and being sent back to Newgate, 
almost astonished the Duke out of his five senses by sud- 
denly swearing that the Catholic nurse had put that false 
design into his head, and that what he really knew about, 
was, a Catholic plot against the King; the evidence of 
which would be found in some papers, concealed in a 
meal-tub in Mrs. Cellier's house. There they were, of 
course — for he had put them there himself — and so the 
tub gave the name to the plot. But, the nurse was ac- 
quitted on her trial, and it came to nothing. 

Lord Ashley, of the Cabal, was now Lord Shaftesbury, 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 389 

and was strong against the succession of the Duke of 
York. The House of Commons, aggravated to the ut- 
most extent as we may well suppose, by suspicions of the 
King's conspiracy with the King of France, made a des- 
perate point of the exclusion still, and were bitter against 
the Catholics generally. So unjustly bitter were they, I 
grieve to say, that they impeached the venerable Lord 
Stafford, a Catholic nobleman seventy years old, of a de- 
sign to kill the King. The witnesses were that atrocious 
Gates and two other birds of the same feather. He was 
found guilty, on evidence quite as foolish as it was 
false, and was beheaded on Tower Hill. The people were 
opposed to him when he first appeared upon the scaffold ; 
but, when he had addressed them and shown them how 
innocent he was and how wickedly he was sent there, 
their better nature was aroused, and they said, " We be- 
lieve you, my Lord. God bless you, my Lord ! " 

The House of Commons refused to let the King have any 
money until he should consent to the Exclusion Bill; but, 
as he could get it and did get it from his master the King of 
France, he could afford to hold them very cheap. He called 
a Parliament at Oxford, to which he went down with a 
great show of being armed and protected as if he were in 
danger of his life, and to which the opposition members 
also went armed and protected, alleging that they were 
in fear of the Papists, who were numerous among the 
King's guards. However, they went on with the Exclu- 
sion Bill, and were so earnest upon it that they would 
have carried it again, if the King had not popped his 
crown and state robes into a sedan-chair, bundled himself 
into it along with them, hurried down to the chamber 
where the House of Lords met, and dissolved the Parlia- 
ment. After which he scampered home, and the Mem- 
bers of Parliament scampered home too, as fast as their 
legs could carry them. 

The Duke of York, then residing in Scotland, had, 
under the law which excluded Catholics from public trust, 
no right whatever to public employment. Nevertheless 
he was openly employed as the King's representative in 
Scotland, and there gratified his sullen and cruel nature 
to his heart's content by directing the dreadful cruelties 
against the Covenanters. There were two ministers 
named Cargill and Cameron who had escaped from the 



390 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

battle of Bothwell Bridge, and who returned to Scotland, 
and raised the miserable but still brave and unsubdued 
Covenanters afresh, under the name of Cameronians. As 
Cameron publicly posted a declaration that the King was 
a forsworn tyrant, no mercy was shown to his unhappy 
followers after he was slain in battle. The Duke of York, 
who was particularly fond of the Boot and derived great 
pleasure from having it applied, offered their lives to 
some of these people if they would cry on the scaffold 
"God save the King! " But their relations, friends, and 
countrymen, had been so barbarously tortured and mur- 
dered in this merry reign, that they preferred to die, and 
did die. The Duke then obtained his merry brother's 
permission to hold a Parliament in Scotland, which 
first, with most shameless deceit, confirmed the laws for 
securing the Protestant religion against Popery, and then 
declared that nothing must or should prevent the suc- 
cession of the Popish Duke. After this double-faced be- 
ginning, it established an oath which no human being 
could understand, but which everybody was to take, as a 
proof that his religion was the lawful religion. The Earl 
of Argyle, taking it with the explanation that he did not 
considerit to prevent him from favoring any alteration 
either in the Church or State which was not inconsistent 
with the Protestant religion or with his loyalty, was tried 
for high treason before a Scottish jury of which the Mar- 
quis of Montrose was foreman, and was found guilty. 
He escaped the scaffold, for that time, by getting away, in 
the disguise of a page, in the train of his daughter, Lady 
Sophia Lindsay. It was absolutely proposed, by certain 
members of the Scottish Council, that this lady should 
be whipped through the streets of Edinburgh. But this 
was too much even for the Duke, who had the manliness 
then (he had very little at most times) to remark that 
Englishmen were_not accustomed to treat ladies in that 
manner. In those merry times nothing could equal the 
brutal servility of the Scottish fawners, but the conduct 
of similar degraded beings in England. 

After the settlement of these little affairs, the Duke re- 
turned to England, and soon resumed his place at the 
Council, and his office of High Admiral— all this by his 
brother's favor, and in open defiance of the law. It 
would have been no loss to the country, if he had been 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 391 

drowned when his ship, in going to Scotland to fetch his 
family, struck on a sand-bank, and was lost with two 
hundred souls on board. But he escaped in a boat with 
some friends ; and the sailors were so brave and unselfish, 
that, when they saw him rowing away, they gave three 
cheers, while they themselves were going down forever. 

The Merry Monarch, having got rid of his Parliament, 
went to work to make himself despotic, with all speed. 
Having had the villainy to order the execution of Oliver 
Plunket, Bishop of Armagh, falsely accused of a plot to 
establish Popery in that country by means of a French 
army — the very thing this royal traitor was himself try- 
ing to do at home — and having tried to ruin Lord Shaftes- 
bury, and failed — he turned his hand to controlling the 
corporations all over the country ; because, if he could 
only do that, he could get what juries he chose, to bring 
in perjured verdicts, and could get what members he 
chose, returned to Parliament. These merry times pro- 
duced, and made Chief Justice of the Court of King's 
Bench, a drunken ruffian of the name of Jeffreys ; a red- 
faced swollen bloated horrible creature, with a bullying 
roaring voice, and a more savage nature perhaps than 
was ever lodged in any human breast. This monster was 
the Merry Monarch's especial favorite, and he testified 
his admiration of him by giving him a ring from his own 
finger, which the people used to call Judge Jeifreys's 
Bloodstone. Him the King employed to go about and 
bully the corporations, beginning with London; or, as 
Jeffreys himself elegantly called it, " to give them a lick 
with the rough side of his tongue." And he did it so 
thoroughly, that they soon became the basest and most 
sycophantic bodies in the kingdom — except the Univer- 
sity of Oxford, which, in that respect, was quite pre- 
eminent and unapproachable. 

Lord Shaftesbury (who died soon after the King's 
failure against him), Lord William Russell, the Duke 
of Monmouth, Lord Howard, Lord Jersey, Algernon- 
Sidney, John Hampden (grandson of the great Hamp- 
den), and some others, used to hold a council together 
after the dissolution of the Parliament, arranging what 
it might be necessary to do, if the King carried his Pop- 
ish plot to the utmost height. Lord Shaftesbury having 
been much the most violent of this party, brought two 



392 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF mQLANB. 

violent men into their secrets — Rumsey, who had been a 
soldier in the Republican army ; and West, a lawyer, 
These two knew an old officer of Cromwell's, called Rltm- 
bold, who had married a maltster's widow, and so had 
come into possession of a solitary dwelling called the Rye 
House, near Hoddesdon, in Hertfordshire. Rumbold said 
to them what a capital place this house of his would be 
from which to shoot at the King, who often passed there 
going to and fro from Newmarket. They liked the idea, 
and entertained it. But, one of their body gave informa- 
tion ; and they, together with Shepherd, a wine merchant, 
Lord Russell, Algernon Sidney, Lord Essex, Lord How- 
ard, and Hampden, were all arrested. 

Lord Russell might easily have escaped, but scorned to 
do so, being innocent of any wrong ; Lord Essex might 
have easily escaped, but scorned to do so, lest his flight 
should prejudice Lord Russell. But it weighed upon his 
mind that he had brought into their council, Lord 
Howard — who now turned a miserable traitor — against a 
great dislike Lord Russell had always had of him. He 
could not bear the reflection, and destroyed himself be- 
fore Lord Russell was brought to trial at the Old Bailey. 

He knew very well that he had nothing to hope, having 
always been manful in the Protestant cause against the 
two false brothers, the one on the throne, and the other 
standing next to it. He had a wife, one of the noblest 
and best of women, who acted as his secretary on his 
trial, who comforted him in his prison, who supped 
with him on the night before he died, and whose 
love and virtue and devotion have made her name 
imperishable. Of course, he was found guilty, and was 
sentenced to be beheaded in Lincoln's Inn Fields, not 
many yards from his own house. When he had parted 
from his children on the evening before his death, his 
wife still stayed with him until ten o'clock at night; and 
when their final separation in this world was over, and 
he had kissed her many times, he still sat for a long 
while in his prison, talking of her goodness. Hearing the 
rain fall fast at that time, he calmly said, "Such a rain 
to-morrow will spoil a great show, which is a dull thing 
on a rainy day." At midnight he went to bed, and slept 
till four ; even when his servant called him, he fell asleep 
again while his clothes were being* made ready. He rode 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 393 

to the scaffold in his own carriage, attended by two 
famous clergymen, Tillotson and Burnet, and sang a 
psalm to himself very softly, as he went along. He was 
as quiet and as steady, as if he had been going out for an 
ordinary ride. After saying that he was surprised to 
see so great a crowd, he laid down his head upon the 
block, as if upon the pillow of his bed, and had it struck 
off at the second blow. His noble wife was busy for him 
even then; for that true-hearted lady printed and widely 
circulated his last words, of which he had given her a 
copy. They made the blood of all the honest men in 
England boil. 

The University of Oxford distinguished itself on the 
very same day by pretending to believe that the accusa- 
tion against Lord Russell was true, and by calling the 
iKing, in a written paper, the Breath of their nostrils and 
the Anointed of the Lord. This paper the Parliament 
(afterwards caused to be burned by the common hangman ; 
iwhich I am sorry for, as I wish it had been framed and 
glazed, and hung up in some public place, as a monument 
pi baseness for the scorn of mankind. 

Next, came the trial of Algernon Sidney, at which 
Jeffreys presided, like a great crimson toad, sweltering 
md swelling with rage. " I pray God, Mr. Sidney," said 
/his Chief Justice of a merry reign, after passing sentence, 
1 to work in you a temper fit to go to the other world, for 
|t see you are not fit for this." — "My lord," said the pris- 
oner, composedly holding out his arm, "feel my pulse, 
jtfid see if I be disordered. I thank Heaven I never was 
^n better temper than I am now." Algernon Sidney was 
executed on Tower Hill, on the seventh of December, one 
jhousand six hundred and eighty-three. He died a hero, 
I nd died, in his own words, " For that good old cause in 
Which he had been engaged from his youth, and for which 
|rod had so often and so wonderfully declared himself." 
] The Duke of Monmouth had been making his uncle, the 
( )uke of York, very jealous, by going about the country 
1 a royal sort of way, playing at the people's games, be- 
oming godfather to their children, and even touching for 
he King's evil, or stroking the faces of the sick to cure 
tiem — though, for the matter of that, I should say he 
id them about as much good as any crow r ned king could 
ave done, £Jls father had got him to write a letter, cor^ 



894 A CHILD'S HISTOBY OF ENGLAND. 



rhich 



fessing his having had a part in the conspiracy, for which 
Lord Russell had been beheaded ; but he was ever a weak 
man, and as soon as he had written it, he was ashamed 
of it, and got it back again. For this, he was banished 
to the Netherlands ; but he soon returned and had an 
interview with his father, unknown to his uncle. It 
would seem that he was coming into the Merry Monarch's 
favor again, and that the Duke of York was sliding out 
of it, when Death appeared to the merry galleries at ; 
Whitehall, and astonished the debauched lords and gen- 
tlemen, and the shameless ladies, very considerably. 

On Monday, the second of February, one thousand six 
hundred and eighty-five, the merry pensioner and servant | 
of the King of France fell down in a fit of apoplexy. By I 
the Wednesday his case was hopeless, and on the Thurs- 
day he was told so. As he made a difliculty^about taking 
the sacrament from the Protestant Bishop of Bath, the 
Duke of York got all who were present away from the 
bed, and asked his brother, in a whisper, if he should 
send for a Catholic priest ? The King replied, " for God's 
sake, brother, do ! " The Duke smuggled in, up the back, 
stairs, disguised in a wig and gown, a priest named Hud- 
dleston, who had saved the King's life after the battle 
of Worcester : telling him that this worthy man in the 
wig had once saved his body, and was now come to save 
his soul. 

The Merry Monarch lived through that night, and died 
before noon on the next day, which was Friday, the 
sixth. Two of the last things he said were of a human 
sort, and your remembrance will give him the full benefit 
of them. When the Queen sent to say she was too un- 
well to attend him and to ask his pardon, he said, " Alas ! 
poor woman, she beg my pardon ! I beg hers with all my 
heart. Take back that answer to her." And he also 
said, in reference to Nell Gwyn, " Do not let poor Nelly 

He died in the fifty -fifth year of his age, and the twenty-! 
fifth of his reign. 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND, 395 



CHAPTER XXXVL 

ENGLAND UNDER JAMES THE SECOND. 

King James the Second was a man so very disagree- 
able, that even the best of historians has favored his 
brother Charles, as becoming, by comparison, quite a 
pleasant character. The one object of his short reign 
was to re-establish the Catholic religion in England ; and 
this he doggedly pursued with such a stupid obstinacy, 
that his career very soon came to a close. 

The first thing he did, was, to assure his council that 
i he would make it his endeavor to preserve the Govern- 
ment, both in Church and State, a% it was by law es- 
; tablished ; and that he would always take care to defend 
and support the Church. Great public acclamations were 
raised over this fair speech, and a great deal was said, 
from the pulpits and elsewhere, about the word of a King 
which was never broken, by credulous people who little 
supposed that he had formed a secret council for Catholic 
affairs, of which a mischievous Jesuit, called Father 
Petre, was one of the chief members. With tears of joy 
j in his eyes, he received, as the beginning of his pension 
j from the King of France, five hundred thousand livres 
jyet, with a mixture of meanness and arrogance that be- 
longed to his contemptible character, he was always jeal- 
|«us of making some show of being independent of the 
j King of France, while he pocketed his money. As — not- 
withstanding his publishing two papers in favor of Popery 
(and not likely to do it much service, I should think) 
written by the King, his brother, and found in his strong- 
box ; and his open display of himself attending mass — the 
Parliament was very obsequious, and granted him a large 
sum of money, he began his reign with a belief that he 
could do what he pleased, and with a determination to 
do it, 



896 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

Before we proceed to its principal events, let us dis- 
pose of Titus Oates. He was tired for perjury, a fort- 
night after the coronation, and besides being very heavily 
fined, was sentenced to stand twice in the pillory, to be 
whipped from Aldgate to Newgate one day, and from 
Newgate to Tyburn two days afterwards, and to stand 
in the pillory five times a year as long as he lived. This 
fearful sentence was actually inflicted on the rascal. Be- 
ing unable to stand after his first flogging, he was- 
dragged on a sledge from Newgate to Tyburn, and flogged 
as he was drawn along. He was so strong a villain that 
he did not die under the torture, but lived to be after- 
wards pardoned and rewarded, though not to be ever 
believed in any more. Dangerfield, the only other one 
of that crew left alive, was not so fortunate. He was 
almost killed by a whipping from Newgate to Tyburn, 
and, as if that were not punishment enough, a ferocious 
barrister of Gray's Inn gave him a poke in the eye with 
his cane, which caused his death : for which the ferocious 
barrister was deservedly tried and executed. 

As soon as James was on the throne, Argyle and Mon- 
mouth went from Brussels to Rotterdam, and attended 
a meeting of Scottish exiles held there, to concert 
measures for a rising in England . It was agreed that 
Argyle should effect a landing in Scotland, and Monmouth 
in England; and that two Englishmen should be sent 
with Argyle to be in his confidence, and two Scotchmen 
with the Duke of Monmouth. 

Argyle was the first to act upon this contract. But, 
two of his men being taken prisoners at the Orkney 
Islands, the Government became aware of his intention, 
and was able to act against him with such vigor as to 
prevent his raising more than two or three thousand 
Highlanders, although he sent a fiery cross, by trusty 
messengers, from clan to clan and from glen to glen, as the 
custom then was when those wild people were to be ex- 
cited by their chiefs. As he was moving towards Glas- 
gow with his small force, he was betrayed by some of 
his followers, taken, and carried, with his hands tied 
behind his back, to his old prison in Edinburgh castle. 
James ordered him to be executed, on his old shamefully 
unjust sentence, within three days ; and he appears to 
have been anxious that his legs should have been pounded 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 897 

with his old favorite the boot. However, the boot was 
not applied; he was simply beheaded, and his head was. 
set upon the top of Edinburgh Jail. One of those Eng- 
lishmen who had been assigned to him was that old. 
soldier Rum bold, the master of the Rye House. He was 
sorely wounded, and within a week after Argyle had 
suffered with great courage, was brought up for trial,, 
lest he should die and disappoint the King. He, too, was 
executed, after defending himself with great spirit, and 
saying that he did not believe that God had made the 
greater part of mankind to carry saddles on their backs 
and bridles in their mouths, and to be ridden by a few,, 
booted and spurred for the purpose — in which I thor- 
oughly agree with Rumbold. 

The Duke of Monmouth, partly through being detained 
and partly through idling his time away, was five or six 
weeks behind his friend when he landed at Lyme, in; 
Dorset : having at his right hand an unlucky nobleman 
called Lord Grey of Were, who of himself would have 
ruined a far more promising expedition. He immediately 
set up his standard in the market-place, and proclaimed 
the King a tyrant, and a Popish usurper, and I know not 
what else ; charging him, not only with what he had done, 
which was bad enough, but with what neither he nor 
anybody else had done, such as setting fire to London, 
and poisoning the late King. Raising some four thousand 
men by these means, he marched on to Taunton, where 
there were many Protestant dissenters who were strongly 
opposed to the Catholics. Here, both the rich and poor 
turned out to receive him, ladies waved a welcome to 
him from all the windows as he passed along the streets, 
flowers were strewn in his way, and every compliment 
and honor that could be devised was showered upon him. 
Among the rest, twenty young ladies came forward, in 
their best clothes, and in- their brightest beauty, and give 
him a Bible ornamented with their own fair hands, to- 
gether with other presents. 

Encouraged by this homage, he proclaimed himself 
King, and went on to Bridgewater. But, here the 
iGovernment troops, under the Earl of Feversham, were 
close at hand ; and he was so dispirited at finding that he 
I made but few powerful friends after all, that it was a 
Question whether he should disband his army and en,- 



398 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

deavor to escape. It was resolved, at the instance of 
that unlucky Lord Grey, to make a night attack on the 
King's army, as it lay encamped on the edge of a morass 
called Sedgemoor. The horsemen were commanded by 
the same unlucky lord, who was not a brave man. He 
gave up the battle almost at the first obstacle — which 
was a deep drain ; and although the poor countrymen, 
who had turned out for Monmouth, fought bravely with 
scythes, poles, pitchforks, and such poor weapons as they 
had, they were soon dispersed by the trained soldiers, 
and fled in all directions. When the Duke of Monmouth 
himself fled, was not known in the confusion ; but the 
unlucky Lord Grey was taken early next day, and then 
another of the party was taken, who confessed that he 
had parted from the Duke only four hours before. Strict 
search being made, he was found disguised as a peasant, 
hidden in a ditch under fern and nettles, with a few 
pease in his pocket which he had gathered in the fields to 
eat. The only other articles he had upon him were a few 
papers and little books : one of the latter being a strange 
jumble, in his own writing, of charms, songs, recipes, 
and prayers. He was completely broken. He wrote a 
miserable letter to the King, beseeching and entreating 
to be allowed to see him. When be was taken to London, 
and conveyed bound into the King's presence, he crawled to 
him on his knees, and made a most degrading exhibition. 
As James never forgave or relented towards anybody, 
he was not likely to soften towards the issuer of the 
Lyme proclamation, so he told the suppliant to prepare 
for death. 

On the fifteenth of July, one thousand six hundred and 
eighty-five, this unfortunate favorite of the people was 
brought out to die on Tower Hill. The crowd was im- 
mense, and the tops of all the houses were covered with 
gazers. He had seen his wife, the daughter of the Duke 
of Buccleugh, in the Tower, and had talked much of a 
lady whom he loved far better — the Lady Harriet Went- 
worth — who was one of the last persons he remembered 
in this life. Before laying down his head upon the block 
he felt the edge of the axe, and told the executioner that 
he feared it was not sharp enough, and that the axe was 
not heavy enough. On the executioner replying that it 
Was of the proper kind, the Duke said, " I pray you have 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 399 

a care, and do not use me so awkwardly as you used my 
Lord Russell." The executioner, made nervous by this, 
and trembling, struck once and merely gashed him in the 
neck. Upon this, the Duke of Monmouth raised his head 
and looked the man reproachfully in the face. Then he 
struck twice, and then thrice, and then threw down the 
axe, and cried out in a voice of horror that he could not 
finish that work. The sheriffs, however, threatening him 
with what should be done to himself if he did not, he took 
it up again and struck a fourth time and a fifth time. 
Then the wretched head at last fell off, and James, Duke 
of Monmouth, was dead, in the thirty-sixth year of his 
age. He was a showy graceful man, with many popular 
qualities, and had found much favor in the open hearts of 
the English. 

The atrocities, committed by the Government, which 
followed this Monmouth rebellion, form the blackest and 
most lamentable page in English History. The poor 
peasants, having been dispersed with great loss, and their 
leaders having been taken, one would think that the im- 
placable King might have been satisfied. But no; he 
let loose upon them, among other intolerable monsters, a 
Colonel Kirk, who had served against the Moors, and 
whose soldiers — called by the people Kirk's lambs, be- 
cause they bore a lamb upon their flag, as the emblem of 
Christianity — were worthy of their leader. The atrocities 
committed by these demons in human shape are far too hor- 
rible to be related here. It is enough to say, that besides 
most ruthlessly murdering and robbing them, and ruining 
them by making them buy their pardons at the price of all 
they possessed, it was-one of Kirk's favorite amusements, 
as he and his officers sat drinking after dinner, and toast- 
ing the King, to have batches of prisoners hanged outside 
the windows for the company's diversion ; and that when 
their feet quivered in the convulsions of death, he used 
to swear that they should have music to their dancing, 
and would order the drums to beat and the trumpets to 
play. The detestable King informed him, as an acknowl- 
edgment of these services, that he was "very well satis- 
fied with his proceedings." But the King's great delight 
was in the proceedings of Jeffreys, now a peer, who went 
down, into the west, with four other judges, to try per- 
sons accused of having had any share in the rebellion, 



400 A CHILD'S HISTOBY OF ENGLAND. 

The King pleasantly called this "Jeffreys's campaign." 
The people down in that part of the country remember 
it to this day as The Bioody Assize. 

It began at Winchester, where a poor deaf old lady 
lady, Mrs. Alicia Lisle, the widow of one of the judges of 
Charles the First (who had been murdered, abroad by 
some Royalist assassins), was charged with having given 
shelter in her house to two fugitives from Sedgemoor. 
Three times the jury refused to find her guilty, until 
Jeffreys bullied and frightened them into that false ver- 
dict. When he had extorted it from them, he said, 
" Gentlemen, if I had been one of you, and she had been my 
own mother, I would have found her guilty ; " — as I dare 
say he would. He sentenced her to be burned alive, that 
very afternoon. The clergy of the cathedral and some 
others interfered in her favor, and she was beheaded 
within a week. As a high mark of his approbation, the 
King made Jeffreys Lord Chancellor ; and then he went on 
to Dorchester, to Exeter, to Taunton, and to Wells. It is 
astonishing, when we read of the enormous injustice and 
barbarity of this beast, to know that no one struck him 
dead on the judgment-seat. It was enough for any man 
or woman to be accused by an enemy, before Jeffreys, to 
be found guilty of high treason. One man who pleaded 
not guilty, he ordered to be taken out of court upon the 
instant, and hanged ; and this so terrified the prisoners 
in general that they mostly pleaded guilty at once. At 
Dorchester alone, in the course of a few days, Jeffreys 
hanged eighty people ; besides whipping, transporting, 
imprisoning, and selling as slaves, great numbers. He 
executed, in all, two hundred and fifty, or three hundred. 

These executions took place, among the neighbors and 
friends of the sentenced, in thirty-six towns and villages. 
Their bodies were mangled, steeped in caldrons of boil- 
ing pitch and tar, and hung up by the roadsides, in the 
streets, over the very churches. The sight and smell of 
heads and limbs, the hissing and bubbling of the infernal 
caldrons, and the tears and terrors of the people, were 
dreadful beyond all description. One rustic, who was' 
forced to steep the remains in the black pot, was ever after- 
wards called "Tom Boilmam" The hangman has ever 
since been called Jack Ketch, because a man of that name 
went hanging and hanging, all day long, in the train of 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 401 

Jeffreys. You will hear much of the horrors of the great 
French Revolution. Many and terrible they were, there 
is no doubt; but I know of nothing worse, done by the 
maddened people of France in that awful time, than was 
done by the highest judge in England, with the express 
approval of the King of England, in the Bloody Assize. 

Nor was even this all. Jeffreys was as fond of money 
for himself as of misery for others, and he sold pardons 
wholesale to fill his pockets. The King ordered, at one 
time, a thousand prisoners to be given to certain of his 
favorites, in order that they might bargain with them for 
their pardons. The young ladies of Taunton who had 
presented the Bible, were bestowed upon the maids of 
honor at court; and those precious ladies made very 
hard bargains with them indeed. When the Bloody 
Assize was at its most dismal height, the King was divert- 
ing himself with horse-races in the very place where Mrs. 
Lisle had been executed. When Jeffreys had done his 
worst, and came home again, he was particularly com- 
plimented in the Royal Gazette; and when the King 
heard that through drunkenness and raging he was very 
ill, his odious Majesty remarked that such another man 
could not easily be found in England. Besides all this, 
a former sheriff of London, named Cornish, was hanged 
within sight of his own house after an abominably con- 
ducted trial, for having had a share in the Rye House 
Plot, on evidence given by Rumsey, which that villain 
was obliged to confess was directly opposed to the evi- 
dence he had given on the trial of Lord Russell. And on 
' the very same day, a worthy widow, named Elizabeth 
'Gaunt, was burned alive at Tyburn, for having sheltered 
■ a wretch who himself gave evidence against her. She 
] settled the fuel about herself with her own hands, so that 
I the flames should reach her quickly ; and nobly said, with 
J her last breath, that she had obeyed the sacred command 
of God, to give refuge to the outcast, and not to betray 
i the wanderer. 

After all this hanging, beheading, burning, boiling, 
mutilating, exposing, robbing, transporting, and selling 
I into slavery, of his unhappy subjects, the King not unnat- 
urally thought that he could do whatever he would. So, 
i he went to work to change the religion of the country 
j with all possible speed ; and what he did was this. 



462 A CHILiyg BISTORT OP EN GLAUM. 

He first of all tried to get rid of what was called the 
Test Act — which prevented the Catholics from holding 
public employment — by his own power of dispensing with 
the penalties. He tried it in one case, and eleven of the 
twelve judges deciding in his favor, he exercised it in 
three others, being those Of three dignitaries of University 
College, Oxford, who had become Papists, and whom he 
kept in their places and sanctioned. He revived the 
hated Ecclesiastical Commission to get rid of Compton, 
Bishop of London, who manfully opposed him. He so- 
licited the Pope to favor England with an ambassador, 
which the Pope (who was a sensible man then) rather 
unwillingly did. He flourished Father Petre before the 
eyes of the people on all possible occasions. He favored 
the establishment of convents in several parts of Lon- 
don. He was delighted to have the streets, and even the 
court itself, filled with Monks and Friars in the habits 
of their orders. He constantly endeavored to make 
Catholics of the Protestants about him. He held private 
interviews, which he called " closetings," with those 
Members of Parliament who held offices, to persuade them 
to consent to the design ho had in view. When they did 
not consent, they were removed, or resigned of themselves, 
and their places were given to Catholics. He displaced 
Protestant officers from the army, by every means in his" 
power, and got Catholics into their places too. He tried 
the same thing with the corporations, and also (though 
not so successfully) with the Lord Lieutenants of counties. 
To terrify the people into the endurance of all these 
measures, he kept an army of fifteen thousand men en- 
camped on Hounslow Heath, where mass was openly per- 
formed in the General's tent, and where priests went 
among the soldiers endeavoring to persuade them to be- 
come Catholics. For circulating a paper among those 
men advising them to be true to their religion, a Protest- 



ant clergyman, named Johnson, the chaplain of the late 
Lord Russell, was actually sentenced to stand three 
times in the pillory, and was actually whipped from New- 
gate to Tyburn. He dismissed his own brother-in-law 
from his Council because he was a Protestant, and made 
a Privy Councillor of the before-mentioned Father Petre. 
He handed Ireland over to Richard Talbot, Earl op 
Tyrconnell, a worthless, dissolute knave, who played the 



A CBILD'S Hist OBY OF ENGLAND. 402 

same game there for his master, and who played the 
deeper game for himself of one day putting ic under the 
protection of the French King. In going to these ex- 
tremities, every man of sense and judgment among the 
Catholics, from the Pope to a porter, knew that the King 
was a mere bigoted fool, who would undo himself and the 
cause he sought to advance ; but he was deaf to all reason, 
and, happily for England ever afterwards, went tumbling 
off his throne in his own blind way. 

A spirit began to arise in the country, which the be- 
sotted blunderer little expected. He first found it out in 
the University of Cambridge. Having made a Catholic 
a dean at Oxford without any opposition, he tried to make 
a monk a master of arts at Cambridge ; which attempt the 
University resisted, and defeated him. He then Avent 
back to his favorite Oxford. On the death of the Presi- 
dent of Magdalen College, he commanded that there should 
be elected to succeed him, one Mr. Anthony Farmer, 
whose only recommendation was, that he was of the 
King's religion. The University plucked up courage at 
last and refused. The King substituted another man, 
and it still refused, resolving to stand by its own election 
of a Mr. Hough. The dull tyrant, upon this punished 
Mr. Hough, and five and twenty more by causing them 
to be expelled and declared incapable of holding any 
church preferment ; then he proceeded to what he sup- 
posed to be his highest step, but to what was, in fact, his 
last plunge head-foremost in his tumble off his throne. 

He had issued a declaration that there should be no 
religious tests or penal laws, in order to let in the Catholics 
more easily ; but the Protestant dissenters, unmindful of 
themselves, had gallantly joined the regular church in 
opposing it tooth and nail. The King and Father Petre 
now resolved to have this read, on a certain Sunday, in all 
the churches, and to order it to be circulated for that 
purpose by the bishops. The latter took counsel with 
the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was in disgrace; and 
they resolved that the declaration should not be read, 
and that they would petition the King against it. The 
Archbishop himself wrote out the petition, and six bishops 
went into the King's bed-chamber the same night to 
present it, to his infinite astonishment. Next day was 
the Sunday fixed for the reading, and it was only read by 



404 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

two hundred clergymen out of ten thousand. The King 
resolved against all advice to prosecute the bishops in the 
Court of King's Bench, and within three weeks they were 
summoned before the Privy Council, and committed to 
the Tower. As the six bishops were taken to that dismal 
place, by water, the people who were assembled in im- 
mense numbers fell upon their knees, and wept for them, 
and prayed for them. When they got to the Tower, the 
officers and soldiers on guard besought them for their 
blessing. While they were confined there, the soldiers 
every day drank to their release with loud shouts. When 
they were brought up to the Court of King's Bench for 
their trial, which the Attorney-General said was for the 
high offence of censuring the Government, and giving their 
opinion about affairs of state, they were attended by 
similar multitudes, and surrounded by a throng of noble- 
men and gentlemen. When the jury went out at seven 
o'clock at night to consider of their verdict, everybody 
(except the King) knew that they would rather starve 
than yield to the King's brewer, who was one of them, 
and wanted a verdict for his customer. When they came 
into court next morning, after resisting the brewer all 
night, and gave a verdict of not guilty, such a shout rose 
up in Westminster Hall as it had never heard before ; and 
it was passed on among the people away to Temple Bar, 
and away again to the Tower. It did not pass only to the 
east, but passed to the west too, until it reached the camp 
at Hounslow, where the fifteen thousand soldiers took it 
up and echoed it. And still, when the dull King, who 
was then with Lord Feversham, heard the mighty roar, 
asked in alarm what it was, and was told that it was 
"nothing but the acquittal of the bishops," he said in his 
dogged way, "Call you that nothing? It is so much 
the worse for them." 

Between the petition and the trial, the Queen had 
given birth to a son, which Father Petre rather thought 
was owing to Saint Winifred. But I doubt if Saint 
Winifred had much to do with it as the King's friend, 
inasmuch as the entirely new prospect of a Catholic suc- 
cessor (for both the King's daughters were Protestants) 
determined the Earls of Shrewsbury, Danby, and Dev- 
onshire, Lord Litmley, the Bishop of London, Admiral 
Russell, and Colonel Sidney, to invite the Prince of 



A CHILD'S HISTOBY OF ENGLAND. 405 

Orange over to England. The Royal Mole, seeing his 
danger at last, made, in his fright, many great conces- 
sions, besides raising an army of forty thousand men; 
but the Prince of Orange was not a man for James the 
Second to cope with. His preparations were extraordi- 
narily vigorous and his mind was resolved. 

For a fortnight after the Prince was ready to sail for 
England, a great wind from the west prevented the 
departure of his fleet. Even when the wind lulled, and 
it did sail, it was dispersed by a storm, and was obliged 
to put back to refit. At last, on the first of November, 
one thousand six hundred and eighty-eight, the Protestant 
east wind, as it was long called, began to blow ; and on 
the third, the people of Dover and the people of Calais 
saw a fleet twenty miles long sailing gallantly by, 
between the two places. On Monday, the fifth, it anchored 
at Torbay in Devonshire, and the Prince, with a splendid 
retinue of officers and men, marched into Exeter. But 
the people in the western part of the country had suffered 
so much in the Bloody Assize, that they had lost heart. 
Few people joined him ; and he began to think of return- 
ing and publishing the invitation he had received from 
those Lords, as his justification for having come at all. 
At this crisis, some of the gentry joined him ; the Royal 
-army began to falter; an engagement was signed, by 
which all who set their hand to it declared that they 
would support one another in defence of the laws and 
liberties of the three Kingdoms, of the Protestant religion, 
and of the Prince of Orange. From that time, the cause 
received no check; the greatest towns in England began, 
one after another, to declare for the Prince ; and he knew 
that it was all safe with him when the University of Ox- 
ford offered to melt down its plate, if he wanted any 
money. 

By this time the King was running about in a pitiable 
way, touching people for the King's -evil in one place, 
reviewing his troops in another, and bleeding from the 
nose in the third. The young Prince was sent to Ports- 
mouth, Father Petre went off like a shot to France, and 
there was a general and swift dispersal of all the priests 
and friars. One after another, the King's most important 
officers and friends deserted him and went over to the 
Prince. In the night, his daughter Anne fled from White- 



406 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

hall Palace ; and the Bishop of London, who had once 
been a soldier, rode before her with a drawn sword in his 
hand, and pistols at his saddle. " God help me," cried 
the miserable King: "my very children have forsaken 
me!" In his wildness, after debating with such Lords 
as were in London, whether he should or should not call 
a Parliament, and after naming three of them to negotiate 
with the Prince, he resolved to fly to France. He had 
the little Prince of Wales brought back from Portsmouth ; 
and the child and the Queen crossed the river to Lambeth 
in an open boat, on a miserable wet night, and got safely 
away. This was on the night of the ninth of December. 

At one o'clock on the morning of the eleventh, the King, 
who had, in the mean time, received a letter from the 
Prince of Orange, stating his objects, got out of bed, told 
Loed ^Northumberland, who lay in his room, not to open 
the door until the usual hour in the morning, and went 
down the back stairs (the same, I suppose, by which the 
priest in the wig and gown had come up to his brother) 
and crossed the river in a small boat: sinking the great 
seal of England by the way. Horses having been pro- 
vided, he rode, accompanied by Sir Edwaed Hales, to 
Feversham, where he embarked in a Custom House Hoy. 
The master of this Hoy wanted more ballast, ran into the 
Isle of Sheppy to get it, where the fishermen and smug- 
glers crowded about the boat, and informed the King of 
their suspicions that he was a " hatchet-faced Jesuit." 
As they took his money and would not let him go, he told 
them who he was, and that the Prince of Orange wanted 
to take his life ; and he began to scream for a boat— -and 
then to cry, because he had lost a piece of wood on his 
ride which he called a fragment of Our Saviour's cross. 
He put himself into the hands of the Lord Lieutenant of 
the county, and his detention was made known to the 
Prince of Orange at Windsor — who, only wanting to get 
rid of him, and not caring where he went, so that he went 
away, was very much disconcerted that they did not let 
him go. However, there was nothing for it but to have 
him brought back, with some state in the way of Life 
Guards, to Whitehall. And as soon as he got there, in 
his infatuation, he heard mass, and set a Jesuit to say 
grace at his public dinner. 

The people had been thrown into the strangest state of 



A OHtL&S HISTORY OP ENGLAftD. 40? 

confusion by his flight, and had taken it into their heads 
that the Irish part of the army were going to murder the 
Protestants. Therefore, they set the bells a ringing, and 
lighted watch-fires, and burned Catholic Chapels, and 
looked about in all directions for Father Petre and the 
Jesuits, while the Pope's ambassador was running away 
in the dress of a footman. They found no Jesuits; but 
a man, who had once been a frightened witness before 
Jeffreys in court, saw a swollen drunken face looking 
through a window down at Wapping, which he well 
remembered. The face was in a sailor's dress, but he 
knew it to be the face of that accursed Judge, and he 
seized him. The people, to their lasting honor, did not 
tear him to pieces. After knocking him about a little, 
they took him, in the basest agonies of terror, to the Lord 
Mayor, who sent him, at his own shrieking petition, to 
the Tower for safety. There, he died. 

Their bewilderment continuing, the people now lighted 
bonfires and made rejoicings, as if they had any reason 
to be glad to have the King back again. But, his stay 
was very short, for the English guards were removed 
from Whitehall, Dutch guards were marched up to it, and 
he was told by one of his late ministers that the Prince 
would enter London next day, and he had better go to 
Ham. He said, Ham was a cold damp place, and he 
would rather go to Rochester. He thought himself very 
cunning in this, as he meant to escape from Rochester to 
France. The Prince of Orange and his friends knew 
that, perfectly well, and desired nothing more. So, he 
went to Gravesend, in his royal barge, attended by certain 
lords, and watched by Dutch troops, and pitied by the 
generous people, who were far more forgiving than he 
had ever been, when they saw him in his humiliation. 
On the night of the twenty-third of December, not even 
then understanding that everybody wanted to get rid of 
him, he went out, absurdly, through his Rochester garden, 
down to the Medway, and got away to France, where he 
rejoined the Queen. 

There had been a council in his absence, of the lords, 
and the authorities of London. When the Prince came, 
on the day after the King's departure, he summoned the 
Lords to meet him, and soon afterwards, all those who 
had served in any of the Parliaments of King Charles the 



408 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

Second. It was finally resolved by these authorities that 
the throne was vacant by the conduct of King James the 
Second ; that it was inconsistent, with the safety and wel- 
fare of his Protestant Kingdom, to be governed by a Pop- 
ish prince ; that the Prince and Princess of Orange should 
be King and Queen during their lives and the life of the 
survivor of them ;. and that their children should succeed 
them, if they had any. That if they had none, the Prin- 
cess Anne and her children should succeed ; that if she 
had none, the heirs of the Prince of Orange should suc- 
ceed. 

On the thirteenth of January, one thousand six hun- 
dred and eighty-nine, the Prince and Princess, sitting on 
a throne in Whitehall, bound themselves to these condi- 
tions. The Protestant religion was established in Eng- 
land, and England's great and glorious Revolution was 
complete. 



CHAPTER XXXVII. 

I have now arrived at the close of my little history. 
The events which succeeded the famous Revolution of one 
thousand six hundred and eighty-eight, would neither be 
easily related nor easily understood in such a book as 
this. 

William and Mary reigned together, five years. After 
the death of his good wife, William occupied the throne, 
alone, for seven years longer. During his reign, on the 
sixteenth of September, one thousand seven hundred and 
one, the poor weak creature who had once been James 
the Second of England, died in France. In the mean time 
he had done his utmost (which was not much) to cause 
William to be assassinated, and to regain his lost domin- 
ions. James's son was declared, by the French King, the 
rightful King of England; and was called in France The 
Chevalier Saint George, and in England The Pre- 
tender. Some infatuated people in England, and particu- 
larly in Scotland, took up the Pretender's cause from time 
to time — as if the country had not had Stuarts enough !-— 
and many lives were sacrificed, and much misery was 
occasioned. King William died on Sunday, the seventh 
of March, one thousand seven hundred and two, of the 






A CHILD'S H1ST0BY OF ENGLAND. 409 

consequences of an accident occasioned by his horse stum- 
bling with him. He was always a brave patriotic prince, 
and a man of remarkable abilities. His manner was cold, 
and he made but few friends ; but he had truly loved his 
queen. When he was dead, a lock of her hair, in a ring, 
was found tied with a black ribbon round his left arm. 

He was succeeded by the Princess Anne, a popular 
Queen, who reigned twelve years. In her reign, in the 
month of May, one thousand seven hundred and seven, 
the Union between England and Scotland was effected, 
and the two countries were incorporated under the name 
of Great Britain. Then, from the year one thousand 
seven hundred and fourteen to the year one thousand 
eight hundred and thirty, reigned the four Georges. 

It was in the reign of George the Second, one thousand 
seven hundred and forty-rive, that the Pretender did his 
last mischief, and made his last appearance. Being an 
old man by that time, he and the Jacobites — as his friends 
were called—put forward his son, Charles Edward, 
known as the Young Chevalier. The Highlanders of Scot- 
land, an extremely troublesome and wrong-headed race 
on the subject of the Stuarts, espoused his cause, and he 
joined them, and there was a Scottish rebellion to make 
him King, in which many gallant and devoted gentlemen 
lost their lives. It was a hard matter for Charles Edward 
to escape abroad again, with a high price on his head ; but 
the Scottish people were extraordinarily faithful to him, 
and, after undergoing many romantic adventures, notun v 
like those of Charles the Second, he escaped to France. A 
number of charming stories and delightful songs arose 
out of the Jacobite feelings, and belong to the Jacobite 
times. Otherwise I think the Stuarts were a public nui- 
sance altogether. 

It was in the reign of George the Third that England 
lost North America, by persisting in taxing her without 
her own consent. That immense country, made independ- 
ent under Washington, and left to itself, became the 
United States ; one of the greatest nations of the earth. 
In these times in which I write, it is honorably remark- 
able for protecting its subjects, wherever they may 
travel, with a dignity and a determination which is a 
model for England. Between you and me. England h$$ 



410 A CHILD'S HISTOBY OF ENGLAND. 

rather lost ground in this respect, since the days of 
Oliver Cromwell. 

The Union of Great Britain with Ireland — which had 
been getting on very ill by itself — took place in the reign 
of George the Third, on the second of July, one thousand 
seven hundred and ninety-eight. 

William the Foueth succeeded George the Fourth, in 
the year one thousand eight hundred and thirty, and 
reigned seven years. Queen Victoria, his niece, the only 
child of the Duke of Kent, the fourth son of George the 
Third, came to the throne on the twentieth of June, one 
thousand eight hundred and thirty-seven. She was mar- 
ried to Prince Albert of Saxe Gotha on the tenth of Feb- 
ruary, one thousand eight hundred and forty. She is very 
good and much beloved. So, I end, like the crier, with 

God Save the Queen I 



THE E^D, 



A. L. Burt's Catalogue of Books for 
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